The Devil's Advocate
by legendarytobes
Summary: Trixie continues her quest to figure out her miracle ability and to try and help fix Lucifer by interviewing his siblings. Unfortunately, her meeting with Michael creates more problems than it solves. Part 7 of "The Devil and Trixie Espinoza" series.


73

**The Devil's Advocate**

"Offspring, it's not that I don't appreciate your attempts to get me out of the club, but wouldn't it usually be wiser to come to _Tenebrae_ than to have the Lord of Hell in your room?" Lucifer asked.

Also, a sight more comfortable. His wingspan-even folded-was not made for the confines of her modest room. Leave it to his luck for Beatrice to have a room on the top floor and cursed with eaves and overhangs.

The urchin rolled her eyes at him, and despite all promises he'd made her about bringing up her parents with Beatrice, Lucifer couldn't help but think of them sometimes. The eyeroll was purely the Detective's and, as always, seeing it stung deeply in his chest. The pinched tone as she spoke was pure Douche, and Lucifer had never missed that level of exasperation.

"Because I am not dragging my stuff in an Uber or whatever all the way to the club."

"Stuff?"

She huffed her way over to a small door in the far corner and flung it open. Half-crawling inside of it, Beatrice yanked out two, huge foam boards. After she settled them on her bed, Lucifer (with some maneuvering) was able to get a focused look at what his ward had been working on. The different colored yarn strands and pushpins were a nice touch. He wasn't even sure where she'd gotten some of the pictures, but he assumed there were some books somewhere in Tulane's classics section that had been, perhaps, vandalized a bit. Fair enough. He'd never had any care for any edition of _The Divine Comedy_ or _Paradise Lost_ anyhow.

"You made murder boards?" He chuckled. "Oh, urchin, I should probably warn you that the last person who made such a thing about me ended up dead and, well, not in the Silver City. We'll put it that way."

"Well, I'm not investigating you for nefarious reasons. I just need a way to think." She pulled out Beelzebub (no Lucifer didn't find that all that funny as a moniker for a rodent) from his cage and set him on her chest.

She'd found a small corner of her bed not taken over by her work to rest and gazed between him and her magnum opus. For Beelzebub's part, the little sugar glider glared at Lucifer and chittered menacingly. Perhaps devils and pets were not necessarily entities that mixed well.

"You do realize that anything you'd have found about me from any source from the Bible to the Koran to Milton is utter bunk, right?"

"Well, duh, but I needed to organize my thoughts."

He arched a scarred eyebrow ridge at her. "Are you secretly a serial killer then, spawn? I don't recommend it. That's definitely a fast pass to my former domain, miracle or not. However, I've rarely seen a compilation of so-called clues like this that didn't concern a deranged mind."

"You do know detectives make these kind of things all the time, right? Mom had one that time that…nevermind."

"Do tell."

"Well, she tried to murder board her wedding plans to Mr. Marcus or Cain or whoever, ugh. Actually, that should have probably been a bad sign even before the whole murdering Charlotte thing. Who murder boards a wedding?"

Lucifer took in a sharp breath at the reminder of the genesis of all his current woes. "Quite. See, then you're proving my point. Also, I do _not_ have horns so you rightly should just burn the picture you stole from Dante. Honestly, humans have no idea what dear old Dad did. To put a rather fine point on it, the Host have few clues as well." He shrugged. "It's a nice art project, I suppose, as long as you're not secretly going to murder people later." Lucifer scratched at his forearm. "I assuredly do not recommend that."

Beatrice rolled her eyes again, and damn it, Dad, did she have to look just like Chloe doing it? "Okay sure, then maybe that's my problem, right? First hand sources."

"Well Dad's well and fucked off to only he knows where. If you get a moment alone with him, Miracle, then please let him know I don't appreciate his scorched earth policies as they apply to me."

"No, I mean…obviously your dad is like the least helpful, uh, person ever."

"Being, Deity, pain in my arse…all of those things really."

"Right." She kissed Beelzebub on the snout and continued. "Okay, so some days it still gets weird being like 'oh hey, Archangel Michael's a thing and he's my friend's twin' or 'God exists too but he's a dick.'"

"My family is rather overrated. You have the best of the lot with me. Jury is somewhat out on Azrael, but Sis seems to be trying so then you have the best angel and the whatever I am at your disposal."

Beatrice sighed. "But, okay, the whole my brain hurts if I think too hard that God's really real and your dad which duh but so weird…and focus on the sources I can get to, then you're right."

"Naturally," he said, standing a little taller until his blasted wings scraped against the top of the eave he'd crammed himself into.

"I can't get what we need from old books cause, hell, clueless old dudes. So, I mean, I should talk to some other angels."

"Am not one."

"You were and probably kind of are-ish," she hedged, her focus guided with laser precision to study Beelzebub's fur. "I mean, alright, sorry but like not enough to do the Enochian stuff currently, but obviously the whole 'don't kill humans' rule applied to you."

"You know, I don't think Cain should really even count. The man-ham was cursed and had lived thousands of years. If you think about it, he had more in common with immortals by then than with other humans."

"I doubt you're going to loophole your way out with that type of fine print," she replied. "I just…do you think I could talk to the other angels?"

"All of them? I have siblings even I can't name, and my memory's eidetic, spawn."

She set Beelzebub on her lap and the little beast had the audacity to stand up on its hind legs and chitter at him, and Lucifer swore it was bearing its very tiny, very blunt teeth his way. Honestly, he'd be impressed with the little beast's bravery if it weren't so tiny. It's brain had to be microscopic and thus the rat must have been just dim.

"Fair, but maybe I can speak more with Michael and Rae Rae? I am going to guess calling Miss Linda or Amenadiel would be out."

"Like I said, not the best of terms with that lot," Lucifer replied, his tone clipped.

He didn't want Beatrice to push on the details. A futile hope most days with her, and that bullheaded look before you leap was assuredly the Daniel in her. He'd be dumb enough to insult both parts of the Demiurge. The Detective had more brains than that. Alas, made watching out for his current miracle rather difficult, since Beatrice was far removed from understanding how truly vulnerable she was and how much more outclassed she was by men like Constantine let alone by beings like him and his twin.

"Sure, I can ask Azrael to drop by whenever she's a lull in her schedule. Mikey seems busier but I'm sure you can also natter at him and get nothing especially helpful from him too." Lucifer sighed but it didn't help him feel more relaxed or any less prickly. "It is rather straight forward, the way I see it. Dad had a rule. I broke it, context at the time aside, and Dad loves to mete out punishment. All that New Testament love and hugs and puppies bollocks is just that. After all, I don't just get my short fuse from Mum."

"And yet, we _saw_ it. Your eyes were different. Photos don't lie either, so I wasn't like hallucinating." She held her chin up higher as if daring him to contradict her. "Okay, so help me puzzle anything out."

"Fair enough," he replied. "What do you want to know?"

"Maze mentioned that there was a long time where Amenadiel was like a human in L.A., right? He didn't have his wings or powers, and he and Miss Linda made Charlie cause normally angels can't, you know, bone humans."

Dear Dad help him. This was his new, least favorite circle of Hell. "Urchin, first off, this feels extremely moot as a point. Second of all, I prefer to think of you in some ways as still nine at best and untouched by lascivious thoughts."

"Hypocrite."

"Oh, I'm rather chaste currently, Beatrice," he snapped, rubbing at the back of his neck. Then, he grazed against one of those damned spines and dropped his palm away. "At either rate, it's not that angels can't have sex with humans. Fallen ones can and have. More than yours truly, ta ever so. I am unclear if Azrael has ever taken human consorts. She's on Earth frequently enough that I somewhat assumed she must have tried something once, if only to slake curiosity. Most of my siblings? They have no sense of fun at all. I doubt they do anything more than sing hymns and _still_ suck up to Dad."

"Okay, but then Charlie's not special?"

"Nephilim never existed before. That part is rather true. Angels can have dalliances with humans. It's just that we…_they_ can't procreate with them. If Amenadiel hadn't been so deeply Fallen and mortal at the time, he couldn't have either."

"But now he's an angel again cause he took Miss Charlotte to heaven, and Maze says Charlie has powers too."

Lucifer quirked his head at Beatrice and studied her more closely. "Does the scamp now? Wings too?"

"Not yet? Maze just says that he heals way faster than a human would-I am thinking some knife training gone super wrong is involved in how she knows-and that, uh, he can stop time some?" She blinked as she considered that. "Can you do that?"

"No, never could, not my area. Do you need something set on fire? I'm rather talented on that end."

"Ooh, do you think I'm a pyrokinetic? That'd be pretty sweet."

"It would not be. I do not want to explain away accidents on that learning curve. Besides, the club is in the Quarter. It's made of wood that's centuries old. I would not have you visit me if there were a risk of you burning my baby down!"

"Well, if you're all fancy and good at being the Lightbringer then you can probably stop fires pretty easily too."

"It's not the point. Besides, unless you've been holding out on an arson-loving past from me, then I doubt that's a talent like the one John-O thinks you'll be nurturing into your power."

She winked at him. "You'd just be jealous if I could set stuff on fire with my mind."

"Can you create entire constellations?"

"Well, no."

"Then I would hardly be jealous, urchin."

"Okay, so but if Amenadiel Fell and got better, then your dad's not been around so he like…Amenadiel I mean…did he do it to himself?"

Lucifer shrugged. "He had a rather ludicrous theory he offloaded on me before the ambush in the loft. Hell loops are based on a human's sense of guilt. Demons and I tended to come in for special cases who couldn't feel normal amounts of guilt to craft their punishment from but who were decreed not acceptable in the Silver City."

"So like Hitler?"

"Yes. The dictator types tend to draw the special hands-on attention but more than that lot as well. Hell loops and rooms are created based on what you feel you deserve. Amenadiel theorized that he _felt_ Fallen and as bad as a human-" 

"Um, we're pretty awesome."

"I've honestly always thought so. But because he felt that way, he gave himself his punishment. I thought that perhaps it was possible, but I don't know if I believe that any longer."

"Why not?"

"Because I _do not_ deserve this," he said gesturing to his scarred and mangled form. "In point of fact, I delivered my promise to Cain as agreed upon, and he was going to kill your mother after having sent someone earlier to ice your father. Not to mention poor, dear Charlotte. Cain had to be put down."

"Curb stomp style?" Beatrice asked quietly.

"I don't feel guilt over that useless, hulking lump of clay. I never would. So, thus, this is not a guilt thing. Father probably had some angel failsafe for any of us who directly killed his precious creations."

"You know I'm pretty sure you did not say that last part like I'd called Beelz a 'pet.'" She scowled at him as she stroked the sugar glider's ruddy colored back.

"Come off it, child. I don't think of you like a pet. Never was all high and mighty about mortals. You lot are way more interesting than the Host. You lot actually change and grow, and you're never predictable. That's what I like most about you all. However, for Father? Sure, I assume like a lark. Make some angels, get bored, make humans. Get even more bored, move off to another universe to invent only he knows what. But, yes, Father always liked you better than us. Perhaps we're all a lot jealous of the humans on that score. Hence, failsafe. I just was the first to trip the alarm on that, so to speak." He shrugged and flexed his fingers and extended his claws. "Honestly, it's not like all angels in the Silver City wouldn't have seen that coming, even me."

"But Amenadiel-"

"Had a lot to feel guilty over if the theory even begins to hold. I would do exactly the same thing again with Cain. I don't regret what I did. I only regret the blowback. That's different."

She sighed but still seemed to worry her lower lip. "I guess, but-"

"_But_ feel free to talk Azrael and my twin's ears off. She never takes enough time for herself anyway and if that gives her a modicum of a break so be it." He frowned and considered the second murder board with lists of hobbies and talents Beatrice either liked or had tried. She'd also compiled a list of notes on anything she felt might be off about herself. "I think Mikey just finds you fascinating."

"Is that a good thing?"

"Well, obviously none of the other angels are thick enough to try murdering or even maiming a human. You'd be safe as houses on that score with Michael. Also, once we give our oaths, we can't break those either. He'd never harm you." He shook his head. "Honestly, I assume that after eons of making miracles, he's actually curious about getting to know one. That or he's never known a human as imperious and foolish as you are, urchin. He might just find you hilarious."

"I'm not foolish!"

"You interrupt warlocks mid-spell and threaten both halves of the Demiurge, you know, one of whom is retired but still technically the Devil. I think Michael's more amused than anything else."

"Well, Constantine's a jerk, and you and Michael can really get under my skin."

He grinned at that. "I live for getting under anyone's skin, child. Keep up. You jumped to conclusions with Michael, which fair based on how piss poorly things went with Old John-O, but I'd bear in mind not all my relatives are as patient as Azrael, Michael, and yours truly."

"No one has ever called you patient, Luci."

"I'm rather tolerant with you, urchin." He said, slipping out of his corner and sitting as best he could at her desk chair. He was hopeful that nothing spikey was even poking through the pleather of the seat. And, thank you Father, how low the former King of Hell had fallen of late. "You just need to be smarter dealing with all the nasties out there. You're far from an apex predator in this world of ours."

"I could be though!" She gestured to the board. "We just need to figure out what _I_ do."

He evaluated her list of questionable talents and let out a low whistle. "You juggled?"

"Dad taught me once for a skit at school. I'm, uh, not good."

Lucifer smirked at that. "Actually, I've a story about a crime scene, my own juggling, removed breast implants and…perhaps another time," he admitted. "I don't suppose I can juggle much of anything currently either."

"Wait wouldn't you just contaminate the evidence-"

"Your parents were rather indulgent."

Beatrice shook her head. "How often did you get to juggle stuff at crime scenes?"

"More than once, but usually it wasn't the actual evidence. It isn't as if Miss Lopez was always a hundred percent serious at all times either." Although she had worn gloves and followed protocol; Lucifer had never been one for anyone's rules after all.

"So, uh, my parents were cool with that?"

He quirked his head at her and hesitated, unsure how much to speak. He and the urchin did best when they didn't focus much on the Before. Then again, if she were so determined-and she was rather, infuriatingly stubborn-to try and "fix" things, then he feared she'd be digging a lot into the past, trying to pick at those final weeks in Los Angeles. He distinctly was _not_ looking forward to that.

Lucifer sighed. "Your parents…the LAPD was getting results. I doubt the higher ups cared much." He grumbled under his breath before continuing. "Honestly, considering just who they ended up hiring to be a lieutenant, I think we can both assume the brass was asleep at the bloody wheel."

"Juggling though?"

"Give us a little slack, child. Besides, I happened to have found a key bit of evidence with the breast implants. The little buggers have serial numbers embossed on them."

"Um eww and weird and man."

Lucifer stood up and shrugged as best as he could in the confines of her room. Honestly, the urchin better get a decent room next year. Shoving the freshmen to the attic really was unacceptable. "You inquired. Now, I suppose that's it for our little tete-a-tete?"

"Well, starting with your siblings couldn't hurt anything-"

"Perhaps."

She ran a hand through her long, dark hair. "So as far as _my_ murder board goes…Constantine said it was just from things I'd done and been interested in before."

"So, what? You want to come by _Tenebrae_ with every bit of paraphernalia for a hobby you've ever had and start with trial and error." His vision burned just a bit with his mirth. "Don't tell me you've been the type for every hobby or fad that came round? I doubt you can mystically, say, scrapbook your way into anything."

"Dude, never did that. I doubt, uh, knife play is a thing…not a 'muse' like talent or whatever."

"Mazikeen would argue with that, assuredly."

"I…yeah, I mean, I didn't really do sports in high school except when Abuelo Hector was all on the side with me just beating his old punching bag for stress relief."

"Then, honestly, at least your grandfather was thinking ahead with practical skills."

"But…" Beatrice continued, offering him quite the death glare should he think of interrupting her again. "…I played the violin for a while in middle school and high school. I mean, nothing super fancy. I made the city teen orchestra stuff but only second chair. I didn't really…I brought it here but haven't touched it. Didn't even have time in first semester. This spring? Um forget it."

He filed that away. He was impatient and rash. Some of his better qualities, honestly, when one sifted through his pile of sins. And he could definitely be self-absorbed, but he wasn't so daft that he couldn't do the math and figure out that between their hangouts on her non-class days and her usually stopping by the big show on Saturday nights, that Beatrice spent close to half the week with him and the Lilim.

No, he didn't think for a second that the urchin was overflowing with free time.

"Right then," he replied. "So, perhaps a fiddler, check. Juggling, well, could help there, although I don't see how that would translate to anything."

She rolled her eyes and placed her hands on her hips. "I could be like Gambit!"

"Beg pardon?"

"Um the _X-Men_. Only been like a billion movies."

He grinned back at her. "Oh those. Honestly, outside of Hugh Jackman in peak condition, not much of a draw for me."

"Luci!"

"Well…"

"Focus," she said. "God, it's like trying to work through things with a five-year-old. How did Mom ever solve anything with you?"

"I'm a savant in many ways. And, alright, not going to lie as I never do, but the 'desire mojo' as both the Dou…Daniel and your mum put it was rather helpful."

"Right okay. So, sure. I have a bunch of sorority stuff since slating is almost done, then this internship interview—"

He narrowed his eyes at her. "Not a euphemism, is it? You haven't actually told me what it's for. I assumed medically related but…"

"Um, again, eww, _not_ a metaphor. It's just I don't want to jinx it. If the interview goes well, you'll be the second to know."

He brought a hand to his chest and sighed. "Urchin, you wound me."

"I tell Maze everything. Deal with it. Anyway, okay sure, end of the week, I so will drag out all my artsy crap things to see you, and we'll just experiment."

"The Lilim have a pool running, you know. I took my bets too."

"Huh?"

"On what you do. Since I regaled them with the Zener Card fiasco, _clairvoyance_ is off the table, but they've come up with an impressive list. I still call Aquaman powers."

"I am _not_ talking to fish."

"Well, with an attitude like that, you certainly won't any time soon."

"I will do something incredibly cool. Ooh, what does Maze think I'll do?"

"She thinks it's irrelevant and won't play. Mazikeen is of the opinion that powers are irrelevant if you have enough demon steel." He rubbed over the scar on his left shoulder. It was deeper and still more raw than any of the others, always would be. Sodding Cain. "She's not wrong."

"But," his protégé practically chirped. "I _know_ I do something cool so I just need to figure it out."

"You don't have to press it-"

"I almost got eaten like three times. You and Maze make a great cavalry, but I'd like to avoid those kind of things in the future."

"If you wouldn't bloody wander off…"

"If you didn't…" she shook her head. "I want to know so I'm going to experiment with or without you."

He pinched the bridge of his nose carefully. Somewhere in some universe or other, his father was laughing his Celestial arse off. Of course, he'd get saddled with the rebellious, never-listened, always making piss poor decisions kiddo. Then again, if the last decade had taught him anything, it was that his father was more of a sadist than even Lucifer had anticipated.

"Beatrice, it might be best if-"

"Nope, mind's made up. I'm going to figure the miracle crap out with or without you. I figure you'd want to be around, but I _am_ going to solve it."

"Then, of course, come by, and I can at least keep a proper eye on you. I just wish that you'd be more cautious."

"Deafening irony in that statement, much?"

He held up his hands. "No, just experience talking. So, urchin, how do you prefer I leave this time?" Last he'd stayed with her for the better part of the night until it was somewhere around four a.m. and he'd, frankly, less-than-gracefully slipped (read more fallen) out of her window.

"I don't think this worked out last time as well."

"It's not the biggest window, spawn."

"It's Friday at nine p.m. Besides Mrs. Murchison and her stupid cat, I'm the only person here. Sober sister and everything." 

"How terribly disappointing urchin. So, you're going to tell me that there's no risk of a sisterly pillow fight breaking out at any time?" He forced the leer into his voice because that was who he was supposed to be, the act that would make her object but still chuckle. _See, fine, nothing to see here_.

She snorted. "Um, so no." Beatrice scurried about her room and set the little sugar glider back in his habitat. The creature still glared and clicked at Lucifer as if it were trying to protect the urchin from danger. It was not exactly cute, but it was quite the sight. The tiny beast clearly had the spirit of a hell hound if not the actual merit to back it up. "I'll just invisible you-"

"Sis's incantation does come in handy."

"And then we'll sneak you out the front door, and you're on your way."

"Walk of shame at least. That I can relate to it."

"Ugh, I swear. If this leads to some weird-ass story about a sorority orgy, when I do get powers, I'm going to make you so sorry."

"I'd never. It would be unseemly, child. That said, if you have the numbers of any of your sisters…"

She frowned up at him and, for a beat, he'd forgotten himself in the rhythm of the teasing and in making Beatrice squirm the way he'd often tried (yet failed) to do with Miss Lopez years ago. Of course, he didn't mean it. They both knew that, but it was easier to joke as the cad he'd been than…well, it was just easier to keep up appearances, such as they were.

Her arms were around his middle again, and he grumbled about that, putting up another show to preserve dignity maybe. He wasn't quite sure. Maybe it was more that he didn't want the urchin to feel she was responsible for him. She already did, but he rather wished she'd focus more on herself than him. He didn't deserve it, and he didn't…she'd let him monopolize her time. He needed to be more mindful of that.

The world wouldn't be deprived of Dr. Beatrice Espinoza because of him.

Sighing, he patted the top of her head, careful as always to keep his hand as flat as he could. "'S fine, urchin. Now, say 'open sesame' or what have you, and I'll get back to the club. At least it'll be livelier than here. You're welcome to join."

"Homework so can't. Plus, I'm the Uber in case any sister just can't get her own safe rideshare home." She pulled away and uttered the short phrase in Enochian. Her accent was shit, but the words worked for her, must be that divine miracle spark.

Lucifer chased away any small, biting flickers of jealousy from his chest and hunched his shoulders down. "Ready then to avoid that old Bat you call a house mum?"

"Just don't talk, and I'll get you out, okay?" She opened the door and peered down the hall before she nodded for him to follow her.

The sorority house might have an annoying low fourth floor, but it was at least wide in the hallways. Lucifer pulled his wings as close to his back as he could. Last thing they bloody well needed was to have the (quite literally) damned things knock the class portraits off the walls. Definitely would bring that bat running.

They made it as far as the front salon before a dark black shape darted across the carpet, its advance followed by the pat of steady feet across the wood. Lucifer tensed but the house mother didn't even look up at him. Rationally, he knew that Azrael's spell had hidden her out of sight for years in front of humans-Ella's extended family came to mind-and worked with Mazikeen and Takazeen round campus. Still, he'd half worried that it wouldn't work as well on him. But the way Murchison was staring daggers at his urchin made him realize that, for now, he was hidden expertly from her perception.

"Miss Espinoza, I heard talking in your room. You don't have your 'townie' visiting upstairs, do you? It might be a bit old-fashioned, but Omega Chi policy is policy. Male visitors are on the first floor only."

Beatrice half sputtered-half cackled. "First, cell phones. Hello? Second, my local friends like Maze are basically my family. I…Luke isn't like that. I know it's hard to keep track of all the tech, but speaker phones aren't exactly new, Mrs. Murchison."

"'Luke?' Not a preferred nickname ever, spawn."

Beatrice didn't do anything suicidal like shoot him a glare over her shoulder, but her posture did go more rigid as she addressed the house mother. "Is there anything else? If not, I think I want to chill on the porch, look at the stars, and keep up my sober sister duties that way."

Murchison scowled. "I have my eye on you, and I certainly am more suspicious of your connection with your rabble after meeting that Maze of yours."

"And you can't kick me out of Omega Chi." 

The woman shrugged and Lucifer really wished he weren't concealed currently. He'd give her something to _worry_ about. "No, but I like to keep an eye on my troublemakers, Miss Espinoza, and you're one of them. I can always smell the problem girls from a mile away."

"Can't see The Prince of Darkness right next you. Not exactly reassured by your detective act, you old biddie," Lucifer said.

This time, Beatrice made a motion like she was about to stretch and, instead, elbowed him in the ribs. He rolled with the motion to spare her arm, but his miracle seriously was going to have get on the learning curve for dealing with the supernatural. One couldn't muscle the Demiurge.

"Anyway, great talk, as always. See you later," Beatrice hurried out the door as if she were on fire and looked over her shoulder briefly just once to make sure he got the idea.

The Devil didn't have to be told twice. The house on a Friday evening was hardly the delightful playground cinema had always promised, not even a place for a gab session like on that campus long ago with the Detective before the poisoning business had gotten so serious. He slipped around the house mum and out the door. Beatrice shut the door behind them and glanced around, trying to make sure they were alone. Poor urchin, he wondered how often she had to pretend _not_ to be talking to invisible people between him and Maze and Taka.

"Is she causing you trouble?" he asked, his voice filled with low menace.

Beatrice rolled her eyes. "Chill, Satan, I'm fine. The Mrs. Murchison apparently zeroes in on a 'rowdy' freshman every year to make an example of. No need to call in a favor or send Maze back after her. In a few months, she'll have someone else to go after."

"Hardly seems fair."

"I think she was just pissed about all the flowers flooding her out of the house."

"The flowers were lovely, I'm sure. Besides, I did need to apologize."

Beatrice stopped herself from reaching up and touching his shoulder. He understood; such an action would make her look daft to everyone else. "Luci, you just needed to say 'sorry.' I…it was never about the gifts you know? Except for Beelz and, okay, the dagger, they weren't good ideas."

"The dagger was bloody brilliant, just ask Esmeé or what's left of her corpse."

"My life, man, it's so weird," she said, winking at him. Her tone was in good humor, but he felt guilty about it all the same.

She'd been created, thrust into a very odd and dangerous world thanks to his father's machinations. Beatrice, like her mother before her and the other miracles, didn't deserve that. Not really. And eventually, she would see that and grow tired of the weirdness too. She was just young. And so frightfully naïve.

"Well, I am sorry now that you're having a row with your house mum. Don't need that kind of extra hassle in your life."

"It'll blow over; don't worry." She grinned up at him and since sorority row was empty currently, seemed to feel confident enough to lean up and kiss his cheek. "Seriously, next time you have to apologize-and take notes, you're good at getting in the dog house-"

"Ta ever so."

"Just write a note. I saved all of them. I…they were sweet," she finished, nodding toward the yard. "It's probably best if you get on out of here. Don't want to tempt fate."

"Or your school chums' sanity should they actually wander across the Devil, himself. Agreed there, spawn."

"Okay so like super slammed but if you could let me know when Azrael wants to see me, I think it's probably better if I meet her anywhere that's not here or _Tenebrae_."

"I would never eavesdrop."

"You so would. Tell Rae Rae I can squeeze her in whenever. Same for Michael since, uh, he seems busy."

Lucifer slipped out to the yard and unfurled his wings. At least his sister's spell was useful, and he supposed he technically owed Death for that one. No one would be able to notice him taking off. "He's miserable, urchin, that's the right word. So not on Monday?"

"Interview, but I'll be over for next Saturday. I do love the show."

He winked at her. "I'm the star. What isn't to like?"

With that, he took off into the night.

Trixie was keyed up with nervous energy. She'd gotten ahead for once working through her assignments, even the extra credit one to make up for her crappy Bio midterm results. It was only half-way through Sunday. She'd practiced what she _thought_ would be the questions asked of her at the internship interview, picked out her best "I promise I'm super responsible outfit," and even cast her vote online for the next slate of officers in the sorority. Not that she needed another thing on her plate, but she really did hope she got social chair. After all, she did technically have an in with the best club in the Quarter (which, hey, by extension meant Maze could wrangle her what she needed from other close by venues). But she was through things to do and even done a quick cleaning of her room.

She was out of procrastination tricks or really anything to keep her busy. Trixie had talked briefly to her parents and abuelos after they'd come back from mass, and she'd even tried reading a book for fun, but she'd just skimmed the same paragraph over and over with nothing sinking in. Honestly, if she were a little braver, she'd practice her violin or try juggling on her own, maybe knit, even though she'd only done that a little in her junior year and mostly made a mess and nothing even recognizable as a scarf. But as much as she wanted to figure out what she did besides act as ready made Devil-kryptonite, Trixie was nervous about trying to trigger anything completely alone.

So that left her conceding that she was out of all her typical distraction ideas and then some and settling down in the commons room to zone out to whatever was streaming as she doodled. She was halfway through her rendition (artistic license taken) of Maze and Luci's fight almost a week ago at _Tenebrae_ when she was interrupted.

She was just getting into the right shading on Lucifer's wings, when a gentle hand was on her shoulder. "Hey, Little, you doing okay?"

Trixie blinked up and noticed three things. First, the clock above her Big Sis Lettie's shoulder indicated she'd been drawing longer than she thought and it was almost dinner time. Second, the TV was off and no one else was in the commons but her, Lettie, and a frowning Annie.

_This cannot be good_.

The reigning president gestured toward the overstuffed armchair by Trixie. "Hey, can I take a seat?"

She frowned but nodded. "Sure, is this like a thing? Did I do something wrong?"

Lettie pushed her braids behind her back and slid next to Trixie on the sofa. Her Big caught sight of her drawing and blanched a little. "Wow, Trix, you're really getting into that club in the Quarter, aren't you?"

She sighed and set her drawing pad down, but Annie kept eying it nervously like it might bite her. So, after a moment of tension, Trixie flipped it so that the cover hid the images. Not that there was anything exactly wrong with them (or untruthful for that matter), but it wasn't doing anything to make her seem normal either.

"I…well, Cheryl had to drag me to it first, but my friend Maze is the head bartender there…" _When she wants to be_. "…and our, uh, mutual friend Luke owns it so. You know, small world when people you knew from Cali work their way all the way out to the Big Easy and stuff."

Annie leaned forward in her chair, and Trixie didn't miss the way she and Lettie shared a pregnant glance. God, her mom and dad did that too, usually before they seemed to mutually decide on the right plan for a grounding. Or that time they told she couldn't have part of her Quinceañera at the Austin Zoo cause of Abuela Minnie's allergies.

One of _those_ talks, then.

"So, Trixie, Mrs. Murchison might have mentioned you had your, um, friend Luke over?"

Trixie rolled her eyes. "I think she doesn't understand how cell phones on speaker work. You know? Like, sorry, trust me, if she'd seen my friend here, she'd have remembered." And possibly gone insane, but Trixie wouldn't be that sorry if it were to happen at this point. Her house mom had gone from being grouchy and picking on her one, singled-out freshman to a flat-out nosy pain-in-her-ass. "I didn't break any rules."

Also, mostly true. There wasn't anything in the Omega Chi charter about Satan himself being allowed in the house one way or the other.

See! Loophole.

Lettie nodded and set her hand over Trixie's left. "Trix, look, I know that what happened with you and Cheryl was really…it had to be bad. I mean, Cheryl had to go to the hospital and then left Tulane over it."

She sighed and let her Big comfort her or attempt to. "It was a lot. I mean, the whole thing is _still_ a lot, and I'm sorry if after Cheryl left, I've been too quiet. I am trying to be social and to do everything for the different mixers and fundraisers everyone needs. I just have classes and you guys, and I do miss Cheryl."

Or at least Trixie felt a hole from where her friend had been and a sense of loss over the person she thought she'd known. In reality, Cheryl sucked hardcore. Not badly enough to hurt, no matter what the demons and then some in her life demanded, but it still ached that her friend would sell her out like that.

Annie's eyes were wide but seemed genuinely concerned, though Trixie had been bad at reading motives lately. Again, see Exhibit A – Cheryl. "But you just really seem withdrawn lately, and we're both worried about you. It's not about Mrs. Murchison. She comes down too hard on things, totally, but I am…_we're_ both worried you're struggling."

"It's just a lot. I mean, people do leave school. It happens."

Usually, they don't try to feed you to vampires first, but that wasn't something Trixie could talk about. She had a lot of those topics lately.

Lettie took the opening. "And you never…if you need to talk to anyone about what you went through that night Cheryl ended up in the ER, we're both totally here for that. You can tell us anything."

She leaned back and let her head sag against the sofa cushion. There were about a million things she could say about the last eight weeks or so. None of them sounded remotely sane so they weren't things Trixie could say out loud. Instead, she opted for what she could offer as a half-truth: "I got luckier than Cheryl. I stayed longer at _Tenebrae_ and didn't get shuffled off with those lowlifes that hurt her. Dumb luck and Maze holding me over, you know? I don't get to complain."

"But it had to be hard, and it's okay." Lettie said, moving to wrap her arm around her shoulder. "You don't have to go through things alone. It's why you have sisters in the first place."

Annie nodded. "Besides, we never…the crazy gifts have died down. Honestly, Beelz is cute and like the whole sorority mascot, but the full court press was _a lot_. You sure you're okay? I mean, it's great if Luke and Maze are old friends, but he's not…like, alright, if you had snuck him in on Friday, fine. It's not like any of us are nuns per se."

Trixie coughed. Nope just all the nope. "Murchison thinks she overheard things. Like I said-speakerphone. They're just friends. So, yeah, a lot going on but it's calming down post-midterms and I can't wait to visit home after Mardi Gras. It's just…it's settling."

Lettie sighed and pulled away from her to pick up her drawing pad and leaf through it instead. To be fair, she drew a wide variety of things: scenes from back home, still life of things she glimpsed around the campus quad, her nascent but maybe promising manga with Maze the Vampire Slayer, and, more often lately, scenes from around the club. But, of course, the _Tenebrae_ stuff probably seemed the most unsettling. Or like she'd suddenly developed a Goth phase.

"That's quite a spread there, Little."

Trixie shrugged. "Well, I think the comic is going somewhere. I kind of dig it. The rest is just, you know, random stuff for me."

Annie leaned forward and, like Lettie, studied the latest pick of Maze and Lucifer's fight closely. "Again, just Trixie if there's anything you need, we're here, okay? Maybe less time in the Quarter is a good thing? Stay more around campus, which, hey, I'm not supposed to say this early, but we had enough votes for a quorum and you're going to be co-social chair next year."

"Co-chair?"

Lettie nodded, her braids bouncing with the force of it. "Yeah, Veronica Chang is going to be the other co-chair. Ended up in a dead tie and, honestly, the last chair was exhausted so splitting it is good. You guys can help get your feet wet on the committee for spring formal planning under Allison anyway."

"I…cool, but it won't be that much time away from visiting downtown, right?"

Annie glanced once more at the sketchpad. "No, but just…we've all seen it happen before. There's always that one sister who gets a boyfriend-"

"So not."

"Or gets distracted with friends in town and doesn't pay as much attention to campus life and academics as she should," Annie continued. "Sometimes they get their act together. But my big when I was a freshman? She ended up failing out cause she got too busy to actually go to class. Trixie, you're a real breath of fresh air here when you're engaged with stuff and with it. Don't let all the townie drama drag you in, okay? Or you know have an eruption of flowers at our house next time, no matter how much the Children's Hospital loved them."

"You sound like my mom," Trixie grumbled, unable to keep herself from blurting out her surface thoughts.

"Well, last few months in school, you know?" Annie replied. "I have time to admit where I've seen other girls struggle."

"I'm _not_ struggling," Trixie objected.

Lettie stood and handed her back her sketch pad. "No, but you've had some big hits, Little, and we'll keep Crabby Old Murchison off your back, and make sure you still feel at home here even with Cheryl gone. It's okay, just don't get all lost in your sketchpad, you know?"

"Meaning, try and actually be social around here?"

Annie got up too. "Exactly, which starts with dinner. Come on, it's taco night, and it smells amazing."

She laughed at that and joined her sisters in heading for the kitchen. "You both only say that because you don't have an abuelita with the best chorizo tacos in Central Texas."

And, okay, so maybe for tonight her life could be boringly normal.

"You're staring."

Trixie felt her cheeks flush and focused instead on her sugary and frothy coffee concoction. The place was local, but basically had ripped off Frappaccinos and at about half the price. She lived here during exam weeks, and the baked chocolate chip muffins that were roughly the size of her head were a nice touch. It just felt so weird. And, no, she wasn't sure how it was any weirder to be consuming drinks that were more sugar than caffeine with the Angel of Death than it was to marathon terrible '90s action flicks with the literal Devil. But it was.

Probably cause she'd always known Lucifer.

Or maybe because she figured The Angel of Death would be some really grouchy, pasty white dude in a robe and with a scythe. Okay, so, fair sometimes Rae Rae did appear in a robe, but right now she had a Nirvana t-shirt and a pair of ripped jeans on. It was just not how she pictured the ultimate ferryman…person…angel for the dead to be. Then again, she was pretty sure no one expected the Devil to basically be a night club act either.

Nothing was like the Bible, at all.

"I'm sorry," Trixie offered and passed part of her muffin (she'd cut it in chunks) to Rae Rae. "Apology gift?"

"It's fine, but you keep looking at me like I dunno…I'm not secretly a lizard person." She shrugged. "You've glimpsed the wings already. Otherwise, it's mostly what you see is what you get with me, Trix."

"I know, and I'm trying, I really am. It's just that, okay and don't hate me, but a small or, um, big part of me is kind of nervous you're going to accidentally touch me and bam! My ticket is punched, and I'm off to the Silver City."

Azrael bit into her hunk of muffin and chewed it thoughtfully before replying. "I can't make you die. That's not actually my ability. I mean, sure, I take dead humans places, but I don't make the schedule. I have to keep it, though."

"Do you know when I'm on the schedule?" Trixie wasn't even sure why she'd blurted it out. She didn't really want to know; it was too much pressure.

Rae Rae's eyes grew owlishly wide behind her glasses. "Dad no. I mean, Dad used to make the schedules and for the last forty years or so, it's all Gabriel's call. I only get them the day before I pick up. I can't affect anything, and I don't really get much warning. Besides, my job does suck, but it's a mercy mission. Souls that get trapped on Earth and _can't_ move on? They _rot_. I mean, I've only had a couple times where other stuff interrupted my schedule, and it got bad."

Trixie frowned and pushed her plate away. She was definitely not feeling hungry anymore. "When?"

Azrael swallowed and dabbed at a spot of chocolate on her cheek. "Well, the Rebellion threw everything off schedule-nope, not talking about it. Lu and I are barely on good terms again, and if he hasn't talked about it with you, then I'm so not gonna start. It was a while and a lot, though. The human souls waiting in the interim? Yeah, a Romero film had _nothing_ on them."

Trixie quirked her head at Azrael. "You watch movies?"

"I have a human friend. I mean, she thinks I'm a ghost cause, I dunno, I though the 'I'm the Angel of Death, don't freak out' wasn't going to go over well. I have seen some pop culture stuff, at least since the '90s, you know? Point being there was um then and when Mom sent the great flood. Everything was totally messed up then. I didn't collect a human for almost forty days. Super big mistake on that."

"Wow."

Azrael continued, somehow still able to bite into the remains of Trixie's muffin. "So, when your time is up? It's definitely up. You can't bargain or change it. _I_ can't change it, cause, end of the day, I'm sort of the heavenly equivalent of a civil servant. Sort of like the mailman, but less depressing. Anyhoo, it's way better if I get your soul where it's supposed to be. The after effects of being stranded? Not pleasant."

"I…wow."

"Yeah, but I'm not going to touch you and be all poisonous or something." Azrael sniffed. "I'm totally safe, promise."

"Cool, check. No Death-Midas touch here." Trixie shrugged and tapped her spoon rapidly on the table. "I'm sorry if I'm nervous."

"Well, I mean, I get it. My job really does suck. It's not like I'd do it if it wasn't my job."

"Didn't any of you get to pick your jobs? Before all the Fall and Rebellion stuff, like did Michael and Lucifer get to pick, uh, making pretty much everything?"

Azrael rolled her eyes. "Older brothers brag about how cool they are. Amenadiel is the oldest of all of us, so he was always big on enforcing what Dad wanted. Had to be strict, had to be the rule reminder, had to sometimes be the whole stool pigeon thing too. Gabe and Raph…have just always been super full of themselves. Archangels, pfft, like that's so special." She sighed and started picking at the laminated menu in front of her. "Michael seems different since Uriel died. He's…trying, but when the family was altogether and before all the crappy stuff, well, he liked to pick on the younger ones. He never really liked me. So, sure, I'm glad he seems to have bought a clue lately." She shrugged and tore a hunk of laminate from the menu and flung it over her shoulder. "I'm not sure yet. I dunno, brothers are usually brothers, and they like to pick on you, you know?"

"Even angels?"

"Oh, especially angels. The Host is petty sometimes. Lu isn't wrong about that. I mean, he wasn't like that…don't get me wrong. Even when he was an angel, he was far from a saint. He could be as bratty or impulsive or wrathful as he is now, but he was always nice to the youngest of us. I mean, it was always more Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael who rode Uriel so hard. Lu never was fond of any of it." She sighed again and looked over Trixie's shoulder at the peeling vinyl of the booth in the diner. "He cares a lot, probably too much. It's not something he ever turns off. Michael or Amenadiel can shove whatever they want aside for duty and honor or all that warrior stuff Dad was so big on, at least for them. Lu was always the type to ask why things weren't fair."

"Well why aren't they?"

Azrael slid her glasses off and wiped them on the hem of her Nirvana tee. "Because Dad made the rules. He's the dude, you know? And the dude abides so he got to make the rules. Sometimes they suck. Sometimes I wish I had a different job or a different power, but I don't and fighting it…well, there's not percentage in that, not anymore. Besides, Dad isn't all bad…it's just, you learn to say 'yes,' you know?"

Trixie took a sip of her Coke and gathered her thoughts before she spoke. This was so out of her depth. Yeah, she'd been confirmed and, sure, she went to mass weekly with her parents and abuelos. Besides, okay, she'd always known or at least since she was seven that the Devil and demons were real. Yet, she was so not any type of religious scholar. She wasn't even taking some intro class this year.

And yet.

"Granted my dad is not exactly the creator of the universe…"

Understatement. She loved her dad a ton, but he was a big dork, especially when it came to, even now, way too much improv. Of course, in her book, more than one improv performance she'd had to watch was too much.

"No, he's not," Azrael replied, her tone chilly.

"But he wants the best for me, and there are rules…" Which she had to be breaking since she was sure if her father had a clue about _anything_ she'd been up to in New Orleans almost over the last nine weeks, she'd be so grounded and possibly consigned to a tower with a moat around it for breaking every rule he'd ever given her. "Still, sometimes we talk over things. Yeah, I press and hate some rules, and sometimes he changes them cause in high school I can have a later curfew than when I was eleven. Does that make sense?"

Rae Rae sighed, and her bangs fluttered before settling down on her forehead. "Trixie, it's nice you have an example from home, but my family…if angels don't do our jobs, terrible, awful, truly _Biblical_ stuff happens. So, yeah, Dad's, uh, so Dad, but he's also like a general and we're the army. The universe doesn't literally fall apart because we do what we're supposed to."

"Are you supposed to have a human friend?"

Azrael's cheeks grew red, and she bit her lower lip before answering. "Okay, sometimes rules get broken. But small-scale stuff. I can't change my job. I can't ask for a different ability, and I can't just…we do what Dad says."

"Cause He made an example out of Luci."

"Yeah, and it's terrifying because, honestly, Trixie, Lu got off better than some."

Trixie narrowed her eyes at the Angel of Death. "You have to be kidding."

Rae Rae slumped down in her booth and sighed again. "Look, I love Lu. I really do. We've had a bad, uh, bunch of millennia, but he's still my favorite brother and that's _not_ just because my other brothers mostly suck." 

"I was gathering it wasn't a hard contest."

"Ugh, hope Gabe is always too busy to poke his nose around here. He's the worst. Anyway, the point is Lu's still at least alive. What happened to him, both times, really freaking sucks, but Dad still didn't snap his fingers and poof Lu was gone from existence. That's what being the favorite gets you, I guess. Again, I can't say but so much about Rebellion stuff, but I have siblings who don't exist anymore cause they chose Lu's side. It's not…_we can't say no to Dad_. That's the way it is."

Trixie crossed her arms over her chest and frowned. "The way things are is crap."

Azrael sipped her ridiculously large strawberry milkshake, and Trixie handed her some napkins when a bit of whipped cream was left on her nose. "Thanks. I just…you came in way late to the story."

"Luci says that too."

"It's a super long story. Dad when he's around he's so _Dad_, and it does suck. But after it all went so wrong, we just say yes. It's what we do."

"I'm sorry."

"Thanks, but it's not like all our lives super suck all the time. It's just…you tell yourself that you don't want more than you can get. Asking questions? As my bestie would say, it's so _no bueno._"

"It's still really sad."

"Well, I thought you needed to pick my noggin for actually helpful things. Dad's on vacation, and when he comes home, stuff will be the same cause we don't get a say in it, but we've managed for eons, and we'll keep going, you know?"

"Most of you," Trixie said under her breath but decided she still needed to get more angel info somehow. She'd promised Luci she'd fix things, damn it. "So," she said, louder. "Your dad-"

"God."

"Yeah_, God_-still weird-but anyway, he just doled it all out on a list, your powers, I mean."

"Bingo."

"And your job is built from that, and God picked it too."

"Yup," she said, and Trixie wondered if Azrael noticed she'd picked up popping the p in her words just like Luci did.

"Well, does it ever, I dunno…go wrong?"

"I don't understand the question."

"Okay, so my theory is evolving but, like, I talked to Luci, and he says that Amenadiel had this idea that the way Hell loops work is how angels could work. Maybe."

"But we're not in Hell."

"No, but so Amenadiel felt super guilty about something else Luci didn't want to talk about. Dude has whole vaults of that, but anyway, Amenadiel felt bad enough in L.A. that for a couple years, he was mortal, but he got better. I guess because he must have started feeling better about himself."

"I'm kind of glad. Not that Amenadiel had his wings fall off and stuff." Azrael shuddered. "That sounds awful. But then he got Charlie, and the little guy is the cutest nephew ever."

"You've met Charlie?"

"Yup!" Rae Rae enthused. "I wish I made money ferrying souls cause I'd spoil him rotten if I could. I can't wait till he can fly!"

"Okay, that's…cool, actually. Maze loves him too. Maybe you can trade auntie notes someday. That said, like, could it be true?"

"You mean that Amenadiel made himself fall? I dunno, sounds kind of loopy. It's not like any of my siblings have ever done that."

Trixie pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. "But what if Amenadiel did and what's wron…what's going on with Lucifer is psychosomatic or guilt or wonky angel powers, right?"

"But Dad always said we can't kill humans, even evil ones. And, trust me, when Ella told me all about what happened in the shootout…Cain totally _did_ deserve it. What an evil jerk!"

"Miss Ella?" Trixie's eyes widened. "Ella's your human friend, the one who thinks you're a ghost?"

"Oops! Yeah, I mean, I know your mom and she exchange like Christmas cards and stuff so please don't like drop the whole 'Rae Rae is actually the Angel of Death' thing."

Trixie giggled and felt some tension leave her shoulders. She sipped some soda again before speaking. "Not telling Mom about any of this ever. Clearly, she's not dealing with anything Celestial or Infernal or anything at all." Her mom seriously had the rosary collection to go along with that denial she was stuck in too. "There's no way I'll spill your secret via some elaborate gossip chain to Miss Ella. We're cool."

"Great!" Rae Rae added.

"But go with me. What if Amenadiel was right and it _is _psychosomatic?" Trixie yanked her phone out of her pocket and flipped it to the shots from the amusement park. "And before you ask, I didn't filter it."

Azrael picked up the cell and studied it. Her eyes were twice as large when she blinked back at Trixie. "That can't be possible. I thought-"

"Yeah, well it happened." She ran a hand through her hair. "So, do angel powers ever like, I dunno, backfire?"

"Not that I know of."

"And how long have you needed glasses?"

She frowned. "I dunno. Maybe always? Not sure. I mean, when spectacles got refined once you all had clear glass, I picked myself up a pair."

"Wait, glass wasn't always clear?"

"Oh no, that came like in the Renaissance. Human history is actually super interesting, although, honestly, until you all had plumbing and deodorant, it was harder to appreciate it."

"Ugh."

"Yeah, I mean. I like you all but there's a reason a lot of my siblings are still kind of dicks about humans. It took you like forever to stop smelling bad, not gonna lie."

Trixie fought the urge to bash her head on the table's surface. They weren't getting anywhere. At this point she had Luci being stubborn as, well, _hell_, and Rae Rae being adamant that angel powers never went crazy. Maybe Michael had more to offer, but her research interviews weren't off to a stellar start.

Azrael reached over and patted her shoulder. "You're okay, right? Did I break your brain?"

She sat back up and sighed. "No, it's fine…it's just rewind on the smelly humans part."

"Sorry, you smell nice!"

"Thank _Bath and Body Works_," Trixie huffed, sitting back up. "Anyway, my point is, you still need glasses, right? Shouldn't an angel have perfect vision?"

The Angel of Death took her glasses off and handed them to her. "Granted, they're a high prescription."

Curious, Trixie slipped them over her nose and then shoved them back off pretty soon after when the strength of the lens made her dizzy. "Wow, you're like basically blind without them!"

"Yeah, kind of, and that wasn't always true. I dunno…somewhere I guess after the Flood I started noticing trouble seeing at sunset, and then I was kind of night blind by the middle ages. But glasses? Awesome, go human ingenuity."

"And what if you did it to yourself?"

"That doesn't make much sense. I literally slip between universes. There's no way that backfired and made me blind. Also, Lu didn't desire himself red all over."

Trixie gaped at the angel. "What?"

"Universes? _Plural_? Dad really gets bored when he gets bored. You think in billions of years he just made this one? Puh-leaze. I mean, yeah, here's where the Silver City and hell and the Host are. One of us, but the multiverse, so a thing."

"So you?"

"I mean, I have help with some other young angels, but, yeah, when I ferry souls, dude, I mean all over the multiverse. So, if I have to pop somewhere else, I can."

Trixie blinked again, trying to get her brain to focus. Having long conversations with angels was so weird. "Like wait…like the real world operates like _Rick and Morty_? How am I _just_ hearing about this now?"

"Well, except for a few pretty smart astrophysicists, humans don't know."

"I mean, okay, back when I was super into astronomy, I read some of that stuff. Or the pop science version of it, but it was theoretical."

"Congrats! Not a theory. And man, when I tell you I'm a busy psychopomp, I mean it. Dad gets real occupied with making things and then he just keeps making them. There are just so many other universes."

Trixie rubbed her temples; she could feel a headache coming out in full force. Her mind could only be blown so many times in one lunch. "Okay, this is derailing so fast, but can I know about those or are they top secret like the list of when someone's number is up?"

"I don't know how much I should say, but I guess it couldn't hurt to give a small tidbit." Rae Rae grinned broadly as she leaned across the table and came close to Trixie's left ear. Her voice was a low whisper when she spoke as if someone else in the modest diner would glean the secrets of the universe from their conversation. Which, fair, could happen. "Did you know that in most of the multiverse, Wonder Woman's real?"

Trixie half-jumped back as Rae Rae settled herself in her side of the booth, wearing a cat that ate the canary smile, which wasn't too different from how Luci's used to be. "No way."

Azrael nodded. "Hand to Dad. It's so true. Tip of the iceberg, Trix. The stuff I've seen…but that didn't make me need glasses either."

Trixie sighed and rubbed at her temples again. "But I think there's something there to whatever Amenadiel thought. I think there's definitely something to an angel having less than 20/20 vision, and what happened at used-to-be-Six-Flags wasn't in my head. Photos don't lie, you know?"

"No, but…" Azrael broke off and her eyes seemed to grow a bit shiny before she removed the out of place glasses and cleaned them before continuing. Whatever she'd been thinking about the pic Trixie had brought, she couldn't quite speak about it. Eventually, took a deep breath and started on a different track. "…what happened right before the picture?"

"We were sharing some stories and he explained how he saved me without me even knowing it from some of Cain's henchmen even after...after Cain died, you know?"

"Okay, trying to help you figure this out, Trix. So go on."

"And I dunno, he tried to shrug off the thank you and I was all like just take the actual compliment."

"Lu was modest?" Azrael chuckled at that. "That's never really been his thing before."

"No, about some things he's probably never gonna be modest. Ugh, do not get him started on my stupid English homework because if there's a writer, there are so even odds Lucifer has had sex with them."

"Um! Hey! My brother. I did not need to know that."

"Point being, when you actually try and thank him for good stuff he did, he does blow it off." She sighed and finished her drink. "I don't think it's a humble brag, false modesty thing. I just don't think he really believes it."

"But you made him what? Take a compliment?"

"I guess! Or a thank you and oh hey brown eyes and then not so much in like a minute." She let her head lull back against the booth seat. "You should come with owners' manuals or something."

"You could maybe ask Amenadiel?"

"I can't. Not like I'm going back to California in ever. Also, I dunno what happened there, maybe you do, but they haven't spoken to each other in a decade."

Azrael shook her head. "No, I just do the invisible thing around Amenadiel and Charlie. I have no clue."

"And so far in my research, I've got one devil who apparently can loosen up a millimeter if he takes a damn compliment, the Angel of Death with a Mr. Magoo problem-"

"I'm not that bad!"

"Those glasses are like wearing a Tilt-a-Whirl." Trixie coughed. "And the half-baked theory of an angel I've met once in my life but can't talk to again. Ugh, seriously, your Dad might work in mysterious ways or whatever, but I'm pretty sure that's just code for being a secretive asshole."

Rae Rae held up her milkshake glass and tipped it just slightly toward Trixie. "You said it, Miracle, not me. I just want that on the record I wouldn't have said that." 

"You just agree."

"Oh totally, but maybe Michael knows more. I mean, he and Gabe and Raph run the whole show. Plus, you know, he's the half of the Demiurge who _actually_ paid attention." She sighed and set her glass down but not before whipped cream spilled onto the Formica. "Trix, I want this to be helpful, I do, but I'm kind of at the little kids' table for angels and, I dunno, seems like a stretch we do all this to ourselves. It's hard to hope after everything."

"Believe me, I get that, but this happened because he saved my mom, okay? It's not my fault, but it _feels_ like it is, especially now since all the miracle stuff feels like some kind of trap God set up. Some weird catch-22. I just want to fix it." 

Azrael picked up a napkin and swept up the extra whipped cream and then crumpled the paper up in her hand. That same one she used most of the time to help lead souls of the dead to heaven or hell and, seriously, Trixie could hang out with the infernal and deal mostly. It was harder to wrap her head around the angels she was hanging out with. Maybe cause their day jobs involved (currently at least) more than running a club in the Quarter.

"I know, and I hope your hunch is right. I wish I knew more, but, honestly, until you pointed it out, I didn't even think it was weird about my glasses. I want to help, Lu, but I also know Dad. And He'd totally do this. Rules are rules, Trix. They're crappy punishments but we all _knew the rules_."

"The Host sound like a cult."

"We're not!"

"Could have fooled me," she said, sighing and then scratching at her nose. "I do appreciate you talking with me."

"Wish I had more info." 

"Anything helps. I'll just keep collecting bits till something makes sense; that's what a detective would do. You never know which piece jars it loose. All that serious stuff aside," Trixie said, grabbing up her backpack. "I have to get going because sometimes I actually do my homework."

"Sounds like a plan."

"But," she continued. "Mardi Gras is soon. Save that date. I mean, maybe you can just focus on ferreting souls of idiot tourists who drink too much near faulty balcony railings?"

"Meaning?"

"Huge party at _Tenebrae_, and I think since, well, everyone's in costume then, I can get Luci to actually be out and about. So _laissez le bon temps rouler_?" 

"Double huh?"

"You don't speak everything?"

"Um, no. Lu mostly got all the good stuff. Amenadiel studied his butt off and can read anything. I have to take people from all over, but it's kind of a telepathic communication once death has happened, so I don't speak French, right? Ella took it in high school, so it sounds kind of familiar."

"'Let the good times roll,' Rae Rae." She stood but offered the Angel of Death her best smile. "Come by, it'll be fun."

The angel smiled broadly, a blush coloring her cheeks. "Well, I bet I could multitask…sure, I'd love to hang with you guys. I bring like beads and stuff, right?"

"I think you earn them? It's my first Mardi Gras too so I guess we'll figure out all the rules together." She grinned back at her new friend. "I bet Luci's been before at least."

Azrael snorted. "If there's a party, he already knows the rules, whether he's 'vacationed' to it before or not." She paused and that shininess was back in her eyes again. "You think you can help him?"

"I'm gonna try. I'm not a miracle for nothing."

Rae Rae beamed at that. "Cool, then I'll see you at the parade."

"Awesome! He's gonna love it."

"No. Absolutely not. Terrible sodding idea."

The urchin had the utter gall to stare at him with those wide, brown eyes of hers. He wasn't budging, just because she'd been able to wheedle him when she was cuter at nine…and, alright, because sneaking her some cash was far easier and simpler a transaction than having to try actual babysitting…well, it didn't mean she was going to always be able to wield that look at him and have him comply. He was Satan, after all. He was the one who laid out the terms. It was rather standard, ask that libelist Vincent Benét.

And yet…

"It's a great idea," she said, setting her violin case down on his sofa and pulling out her instrument. She slid into the cushions and started to rosin up the bow first in long, loving strokes. "You need to hang out more with Rae Rae, and Mardi Gras will be fun."

He sighed and shifted a bit. The piano bench shuddered a little under his motions but held. Good, he didn't need anything else pesky today. He had enough of that in such wily offspring. He blamed the Detective. Daniel had always been, granted, more complicated than Lucifer would have anticipated but not a mastermind per se. The Detective wasn't either. She was-still had to be-too straight-laced for that. However, she was clever. In Beatrice that had warped into a cunning he admired. At least, when it wasn't leveled his way.

"And you think that what? I'll grand marshal, offspring?"

Beatrice rolled her eyes and started running the bow across the strings, adjusting the tune with the violin's pegs as she went. "No, but don't tell me that _Tenebrae_ doesn't go all out with a party anyway. I'm suggesting, you know, like let it spill out on the street, maybe sponsor a float. My sorority is doing one. I bet half the bars in the Quarter are."

"I suppose that might be true."

"Maze would know. I bet she knows all the other owners around here since she runs the place when she's actually in town."

He stiffened at the demon's mention. After their fight, she'd been off on a one-demon mission to hunt down the location of Esmeé's nest. Drawing and quartering was a start, as was delivering the pieces of the vampiress to the nests he did know about. But it would be his upmost pleasure and, honestly, duty to tear the remains of Esmeé's own coven limb from very bloody limb. No one stole from the Devil and lived to tell about it. Or, well, if they lived, it was only for prolonged agony and at his discretion. Still, with Mazikeen out hunting, it hadn't left them with any time to reconcile. He was sore about their fight and not because he'd lost. It was his mistake for underestimating Maze's speed and agility and, frankly, for refusing the last decade to learn much of how to fight as he was now. He was so different, when before he'd always been light-footed and all about avoiding a combatant, about letting his opponent make their first-and also final-mistake.

He was far too large for that now; decidedly a wrecking ball.

As loathe as he was to test the limits of his current form, Lucifer would have to actually spar more with Mazikeen (none of the rest of the Lilim would be crazy enough to put up a decent fight with him). Other nasties would come for Beatrice, and he was rusty in a fight at best.

So, he wasn't upset with Maze because of the sparring.

No.

He was upset because Maze had been cutting, per usual, with her words. She knew him best, so she knew how to wound him as well. It was mutual, of course, the way they could cut each other. But the argument brought so much back to the surface. A small, livid part of him felt _all_ that had befallen him could be traced back to Maze. Maybe if she hadn't tried to side with Cain for a while, maybe if the lout hadn't stolen one of her blades…maybe.

He banished those thoughts away and promised himself he'd deal with it when and if the demoness found the nest they both wanted so badly in their grasp. Right now, he had other priorities. Shrugging, he turned to where Beatrice was warming up with some basic scales.

"Mazikeen would know, but my reticence isn't about Azrael as such. She's been rather lovely so far, and her aid of the incantation has been invaluable in keeping you safe."

"Cool, plus she did buy me lunch yesterday so that was nice."

"Anyway, urchin," he continued. "as far as Mardi Gras goes, I do know you'd like for me to be out and about a bit more."

"_Any_," she replied. "Look, I do understand somewhat."

He chuckled bitterly as she started playing a light rondeau. "I doubt that you do."

She didn't look over at him, just continued moving her fingers lightly over the ebony neck of the violin. "Not exactly. I mean, I can't…your Dad sucks. He really, super sucks, and that was a point Rae Rae didn't exactly want to admit but did once I pressed her."

"Azrael is still rather young for a Celestial, and she wants to keep the family she has. She was what would have been the angelic equivalent of a teenager when I Fell and not really much older than that when Mum was damned. It's been hard on her to cling to what she has."

Beatrice paused long enough to frown at that. "That actually explains a lot. I mean, you have the emotional maturity of a pet rock."

"Why thank you, spawn. I care about you too."

"You know what I mean, but Rae Rae seems like your average hipster. It's so weird!"

"Yes, well, Dad does suck, as you so prosaically put it." He gestured vaguely to himself. "And this definitely, ahem, sucks beyond the telling of it."

"But…when patrons come here even for happy hour, they don't freak out or need special padded cells because they expect a show." She shrugged and started a tune that it took a few moments for Lucifer to place. It was hardly a classical song. "If you're going to be out besides at an abandoned amusement park, well, you need to be expected, more or less."

"Do tell and is that the theme from _The Pink Panther_?"

"I have layers," she explained. "Besides, I really like it! It's so jazzy."

"Do have Ezzekeen take you to a real club for some of his band's sessions. You need to up your appreciation for actual blues and jazz, urchin. At least you've come to the right place, child."

She snorted to herself. "Whatever, Satan. This song? Totally awesome." The offspring dug into the next refrain with added gusto just to spite him. "But, okay, anything else, you need that expectation or you end up with problems."

"Mass insanity," Lucifer corrected. "And you've picked Mardi Gras?"

"Well, Halloween's not for another seven months. Besides, people dress up as skeletons and stuff anyway. It's religious-the whole Fat Tuesday thing-so it's not like you object to everyone turbo cramming sin before Lent."

"Offspring, I do resent it a bit. Sin should be partaken in at one's leisure. Repenting for Lent is overrated."

"Sure, yeah, I'll get right on telling Dad and my abuelos that," she said, starting the damn song over again. "And, hey, a third of the color scheme is purple, and that's totally your color." She arched an eyebrow as she twisted her neck just a bit around his living room.

Granted, maybe most people wouldn't have redecorated with violet velour curtains to block out the pesky sun while nursing over a hangover (side benefit of having a miracle around again was actually getting soused worked with inhuman effort), but he wasn't going to concede that to her.

"Yes, well, it might work if some assume it's all an act. Didn't do much for that poor server, Gretchen, did it?"

"Well, and everyone is going to be so trashed, Luci, they're not going to know the difference." Beatrice sighed and set her violin down on the sofa again, bow as well. Then, she turned to him. "It could be fun! Besides, I'm really excited about the float. I'm on the committee for it and so if you want any tips on stuff for _Tenebrae_…"

"I'm quite fine on that point, urchin."

"And," she said, her eyes going huge. "_I've_ never been to Mardi Gras before. I mean, yay, good Catholic so I've done the actual Lent stuff. Last year, I gave up soda and almost went bat shit by the third day with so not enough caffeine in my system. But I should get to do the fun part first and enjoy Mardi Gras, right? I was talking with Rae Rae about trying to see which of us could earn more beads and-"

Lucifer growled and, for once, didn't regret the action. Despite the spawn's bravado (which, again, wielded against almost anyone else, Lucifer would have admired), she tensed a little. He smirked back at her. She was, divinely blessed or not, still very much human, and they all had their instincts too, didn't they?

"That, urchin, is assuredly not the way to win this argument. Have you any idea how women earn beads at Mardi Gras?"

"I dunno. I figured like dancing? Honestly, after I got back from talking with Rae Rae, I had this huge chemistry thing to finish so I didn't exactly have time to Google my answer."

"Child, the women who get the most beads in this part of the Quarter at Mardi Gras earn them by _flashing_. While your mother and I are far from on speaking terms currently or ever, I would be remiss to let you enact _Girls Gone Wild_ on my very doorstep."

"What?" Beatrice made a strangled noise as her face turned an unflattering shade of purple. "I didn't know that!"

"You are too innocent for this world sometimes, urchin," Lucifer said, sighing. "So, no, I'm assuredly not tempted to get into the Mardi Gras spirit with the threat of my charge and my favorite sister flashing strangers on balconies."

"Well, I didn't know! I wouldn't do that! Besides, I know Rae Rae wouldn't. I mean, then we just do the other stuff."

Oh, for the love of Dad, she was actually having him consider this and, to be honest, he was rather tempted to at least enjoy the festivities for once. It had been something, small and sad as it was, to even be out and about at the abandoned wreck of the amusement park. Perhaps, he'd missed fresh air on his mangled skin more than he'd realized.

He sighed and rubbed at his temples as carefully as he could. "If I open up _Tenebrae_ for a bigger than usual celebration and go out on the street myself, I certainly won't help you and Azrael get deep into debauchery."

"What kind of Devil are you?"

"Little sister and unasked for holy mission," he replied flatly. "I'm glad you've the sense to not 'earn beads' now that you know how it's done, spawn. That saves me so very many heart attacks."

"Ugh, it's not like I knew!" She frowned. "Oh man, if Rae Rae asked Miss Ella…she's gonna think I'm nuts too."

"Ooh, caught that did you?"

"A little. I didn't know Miss Ella talked to angels, well, besides you."

"Wasn't even one back in Los Angeles, assuredly, urchin. And Miss Lopez didn't know. She thinks dear Azrael is a ghost because while I never lie, my sister is far more like Dad on that score. Also, I…I never told Ella. I'm rather glad I didn't, all things considered."

The urchin's eyes grew shiny and she made half a step to him before she steadied herself and picked her violin back up. Good. While he appreciated her hugs (and Buzzfeed for that piece she now swore by about benefits of too-long hug length), he didn't need the pity of a (mostly) human child. It was kind but fit him horribly. He was older than most of the universe, he didn't need the solace of a child. Truly, he didn't.

"Maybe…"

"No percentages in that, spawn," he said, tone weary. "However, I will do as you ask and invite Azrael for our expanded festivities this year. That said, you will _both _be on your best behavior. I've an eidetic memory and cannot unsee if you go as crazy as the average sorority girl on Bourbon Street."

"Um, yuck."

He smirked back at her. "And while I've no objection to you having the occasional cocktail at _Tenebrae_ as all the Lilim work for me and will cut you off after a couple, I am serious that you won't get strung out at Mardi Gras either. And do us a favor, child, and don't try to sneak around me. After all, I'll know."

"Wait…so you, who totally are like the ultimate hedonist cause I mean I was nine and not dumb and I _know_ you had awesome stories that Mom wouldn't let you say out loud or ever…"

He coughed. "Most I'll likely never share with you, offspring. However, I can be a bit of a hypocrite in my advanced years. You want me to host the festivities, then you get to stay mostly sober, Beatrice. I'm not an ogre. A toke or two here, a shot of Jack there. I just mean, most of the things people will get up to all day, I won't let you try."

She snorted and started into a bit of Beethoven. He shrugged. While he had a (granted) melodramatic affection for _The Moonlight Sonata_, he'd never been a huge fan of the Fifth Symphony overall.

Beatrice grumbled under her breath. "I wasn't going to try freebasing and shooting anything up my arm."

"Then, we've no quarrel."

"Bodyguard duty cool. Babysitting me like I'm still nine, not as cool. You're Old Scratch, if I wanted…and I don't…but if I wanted…you should be like helping me chase all the dragons."

"Nope," he said, stretching the word out into several syllables. "Are the terms agreeable then, urchin?"

"Of course, especially if you get out of the club and onto the street."

"You don't have to babysit me either," he grumbled back.

"No," she said, her playing going a bit flat as her voice went heated. "I guess we just sort of mutually look out for each other then, and, dude, I really didn't know about the bead thing."

"I assume you didn't." He sighed. "I am nothing if not sentimental. The Detective and Daniel don't know the difference and never will, but once…well we were at least work colleagues if not truly friends, and I would be remiss if I let you run wild throughout the Big Easy, wouldn't I?"

Beatrice stopped again and sat down on the bench beside him. Though she was a wisp of a thing, the bench groaned again, and Lucifer rolled his eyes. Stupid bloody useless things that called themselves wings. He had no doubt the bat-like monstrosities were frightfully heavy. They weighed his own shoulder muscles down enough, didn't they?

"You know, I mean, we don't talk about Before, and I get that."

"Do you?"

"Yeah, but eventually, since I'm trying to figure out everything and how to help, we are going to have to, especially about the shootout thing. Not now, not even until after Mardi Gras. I still am tracking down my angel witnesses and stuff. Any word on when Michael will be dropping by?"

"I have been praying, Beatrice," Lucifer admitted. And Silver City above, if that wasn't an admission of just how much she had him wrapped around her little finger, he didn't know what was. Assuredly, before Beatrice Espinoza exploded back into his life, the second-to-last-being Lucifer ever would have prayed to would have been his twin. "He's rather busy. I think keep his eye on all the Host, especially those with posts on Earth or the exiles, has him run ragged. When I get ahold of him, I'm sure he'll be happy to help."

"Cool. It's just…I know we don't talk about back then much because, honestly, I'm afraid if we do, we'll fight, and you'll make me go away, maybe even home to Texas."

Lucifer let his wings droop a bit. "Child, I gave my word. I think it's a terrible idea, and I do think that old John-O has a point about this town being far too dangerous for the likes of you, but I promised that if you go away, it shall be at your own discretion. I wouldn't any longer hold your parents', well, your mother's actions against you."

She frowned and worried her lower lip before replying again. "I know, and I don't like to bring it up much either because I know it makes you sad."

"They were, all things considered, spawn, still the best years of my life. I have many regrets, but that they happened at all, is not among them. Obviously, I do wish things had ended better." he admitted, barking out a strangled laugh that was anything but the casual tone he'd hoped to affect. "Anything would have been a vast improvement."

She nudged his shoulder with her own. "All that said, I do think…yeah, okay, Dad was kind of like jealous of you? I think more because everyone at the station totally was eating out of the palm of your hand. I mean, even when I had sit and do homework at Mom or Dad's desks, it was obvious the whole station thought you were awesome."

He winked at her and tried again for levity. Anything to avoid the heavy clenching around his heart. "That's because I very much am awesome, child, and one cannot argue with facts." 

"Yeah, okay, so Dad was totally jealous of that for a while, but I think he liked you too eventually, caught up with the rest of the station. Everything with Miss Charlotte…it took him a long time to get over it."

"I am so very sorry."

"Cain did it. Ugh, can I like even get a small pop down to Hell? Just the once? That is a dude who needs to be seriously kicked in the balls on a loop."

"First, never even joke," he said, his tone hard. "I'd never allow it, and I have a few vetos at my gates, usually children anyway. Second, don't take me for an amateur. Believe me, spawn, what he's suffering is far worse and more painful than something so basic, I promise you."

"Good," she said, holding her chin high. "He should."

"Ruthlessness becomes you, but I'd refrain from it. Even if…well, if the miracles have a more insidious purpose than we first thought-"

"You mean cause I'm like your leash, right?"

He sighed and set his fingers slowly against the ivory of the piano's keys. They were cool to the touch, and it felt like eons since he'd even dared touch a piano. The first few months in New Orleans, in all his rage, he'd shredded two and left the remains of the third in his flat out of sentimentality or some such rot. Damn it, how he'd missed even that simple a release. He hadn't realized till he couldn't anymore how often he'd work through thoughts and emotions by mindlessly playing a tune till the hours wiled away and the sun set.

"Yes, Dad intends it that way. I have no such designs on letting that be so. We're where we are now and forced together after a fashion because of Father's endless games, but you're not my leash. We have some free will, yes? We figure out how the rest of this goes, urchin. But my point was even if the miracles weren't some olive branch."

"I wish we were. I mean, I wish your dad didn't suck."

"Yes, quite," Lucifer replied, pressing down on the keys just a bit to play a simple chord. "I still wouldn't press my luck, Beatrice. You're blessed, not immune from being as petty or guilt-ridden as the next human, as far as I can tell. It's best not to wish for bloody vengeance."

"Cain earned it."

"Yes, but let only one of us bear the brunt of that man-ham's mistakes and machinations. Don't sully your soul on that sack of nothing's account, child." He shrugged and struck a second chord. Slowly, deliberately. Stupid, fucking claws. It was (even if procured with his own means) a thoughtful gift that Beatrice and Ezzekeen had arranged. He wanted to keep this piano in one piece longer, if that was at all possible.

"Okay, I'll try, but Dad liked you. I mean, it took him longest to get on board with the rest of the precinct, but I think he did. I know Mom…she wasn't happy that year she was dating and engaged to freaking Cain. She wasn't happy the way she was supposed to when they got serious, not like when you'd come over and just do dumb stuff like board games and pizza and movies and things you had to have hated because I made you watch like _Frozen_ a million times."

"I didn't completely mind. I come from a kingdom where everything runs on a loop. I've overseen far less interesting repetitions."

Beatrice rolled her eyes and thunked him again shoulder-to-shoulder. "Great, I was more entertaining than hell. Good to know."

"You were fine. For a child that's quite something, never could stand them."

"Because they're dirty and sticky if I recall."

He sighed and his hands hit a discordant set of notes that echoed through the room. "No because I only have so many vetoes, Beatrice, and sometimes even I can't keep children out of my domain. I do what I can, but I don't pick who comes, and I…I would not have wished such fates on those I couldn't beg, borrow, or threaten back into the Silver City. The children in Hell…they're teenagers, but fifteen or so is so very young, spawn, even back when people didn't live long because of the wonders of disease and the like. I don't care for children because in general, they remind me of the ones I couldn't force Dad to take on his end after their deaths." He shook his head. "But innocence or actual guilt never really bothered him much at the end of the day."

"Jesus," she said, her admission barely a whisper.

"Not by half," Lucifer replied. "But for what you were, I found you not unpleasant. It helped you were clever and had a ruthless instinct half the Lilim could sorely use."

She took a shuddering breath. "Well, that's something. I just…I do think Mom liked you. I guess it doesn't matter now, or it's not enough, but I know she did."

Lucifer felt that vice on his heart tighten again. It took a few, deep breaths before he was able to speak at all. "The Detective…I think you may be partially right, spawn. I believe your mother was rather fond of me."

"See, I told you so." And her eyes lit up so triumphantly at that.

He hated to chop that enthusiasm off at the knees, but he never lied, did he? "But she was fond of the image I'd curated because, as the lovely Miss Lopez once put it, while I do not lie, I have been known to bluff and compartmentalize around the truth."

"Huh?"

"Your mum probably fancied who she thought I was." He sighed again, suddenly feeling as old as he actually was. Standing from the bench, he eased over to the bar and poured himself a Scotch. He left the top off the Macallan. He'd be going back for seconds. And probably the rest of the bottle. "I set myself up for an expiration date. I just didn't anticipate it would all collapse in such a spectacular fashion." He guzzled the rest of the shot down greedily before pouring another. "When you do see Mikey, ask him. My twin and I have rarely seen eye-to-eye, but he always said I lacked foresight. He's not bloody wrong, is he?"

Beatrice nodded and swallowed hard. "I shouldn't have started speaking about Before. I knew it would go badly. I just thought if you knew," she trailed off and shrugged helplessly. "I think Mom cared is all."

"Well, I can promise you, Beatrice, she most certainly doesn't now." He bit back. But her face was so crestfallen then that he cursed under his breath in Lilim and set the drink away. Disappointing the urchin was a bit like kicking a puppy in the face and about as rewarding. Lucifer walked back to the bench and set his hand delicately on her shoulder. "None of that now, don't tear up. I thought this was supposed to be me helping you with your fruitless power inventory project."

"It's not fruitless. I'm not psychic, and I'm pretty sure that I'm not some kind of magical violinist. Maybe."

He smirked at her, a lightness coming back to him now that the spawn was off the dreaded topic of Before. "So, you're not Vanya Hargreeves?"

"Huh?"

He chuckled and eased himself back onto the bench beside her. "_Umbrella Academy_? I've had ten years, not much to do, and an awful lot of Netflix. I couldn't only watch _Bones _all day."

"Well, one small thing to thank the universe in general for," she said, hopping up herself and grabbing up her violin. "Maybe though. I only played like three songs." She quirked her head at him, and he could practically see the hamster running on the wheel in her devious mind. "Can you play at all now?"

Lucifer flexed his finger into fists, letting his claws dig just a bit into his palms. "I haven't tried in a long time, child. At first, I was very angry and tore…well everything up. Ask Mazikeen on that score. Anything complicated, like a jazz piece or Chopin are certainly beyond me. Why do you ask?"

"Accompaniment?" she asked, her voice squeaking a little on the end. "I mean, do you want to try? That or I could just play _The Pink Panther_ on a loop."

"And they say I'm an evil torturer," he replied. "I suppose if it were fairly slow as a tempo, sorry about that, and rather simple as a composition, I could attempt to follow you. I'm not sure how well your lovely gift would fare, Beatrice."

"Well, you said you had more money than God, right?"

"Metaphorically and literally true."

"Then, okay, if you mess this one up, you can just get another one."

"Pianos-Steinways at that-are hardly Kleenex, urchin. Would you be so cavalier if it were a Stradivarius I were ruining?" 

"No, but I think if we go slow you could. I do!"

He tapped his foot a bit on the pedals of the piano as he thought her idea over. The last thing he wanted was to turn away from the keys now. He had played instruments since they'd been invented but fallen hard for first the organ and the harpsichord before discovering his true calling for the piano back in the early 18th century. He'd even snuck a poorly battered one to Hell early on before Amenadiel could stop him. Lucifer had never gone a day without it, even banged up and scarred as the one he had hidden in Hell was. Ten years was a blink in some ways to the endless eons he'd ruled Hell, but the last decade had felt longer than most of his life, and the lack of peace brought by playing was a not inconsiderable part of that.

"Very well, urchin, but please forgive any errors. I am far from at top form."

She rolled her eyes. "God…Um, you know what I meant. That ego on you, Luci. I haven't even brushed off my violin since freaking August. And I totally ate it on the back half of the first movement in Beethoven's Fifth. You were nice enough to sit through that. I mean, for fun, right? It doesn't have to be awesome, okay? I get it. If you can sort of follow and the piano stays standing, big win."

"Yes, what standards we have now, spawn."

"If, you know, I get some of my own mojo actually going, even better right?"

"Alright, so, my evil genius, what do you want to do?"

"Can you do the Beatles?"

Despite everything, Lucifer had to smirk. Some roles he'd worked too hard to play, and, once, cad had been chief among them. "Oh Beatrice, I did. Well, at least one, but that would be telling wouldn't?" He grinned even more broadly. "But I suppose that's not what you meant."

"Whoa, so did they like…is that how they got famous?"

"No, they were bloody brilliant. That's different. However, if you can pick the song, I think I'll manage not to rend the Steinway to nothing. So, pick your poison."

"'Hey Jude?'"

He winked at her. "Oh, child, well chosen. I always did fancy Paul best. Now, if you'd like to hear more on that-"

"Nope, nope. Do not need to even know how you spent the sixties or whatever part of it on Earth, Luci. Just play."

"Very well, then, but he was rather _fascinating_."

"Play, Satan, just play."

After fumbling, and that was the kindest word for it, through an hour of several Beatles hits, although Luci had drawn the line personally at "Let it Be." Not that he didn't appreciate the song itself, or even get that the Mother Mary in question wasn't literally the one for his half-brother but Paul McCartney's own, he wasn't necessarily fond of songs that encouraged giving up after a fashion and letting sleights lie. Wasn't in his nature. However, they spent at least an hour that day and each day after-even around her class and school schedule-playing together. It would not exactly be an act that would be fit for _Tenebrae_ as he had once headlined _Lux_. It was, frankly, pathetic.

And he stumbled more than the average middle schooler at a concert band performance. (Something he only knew because he'd owed Diaz in evidence a favor for allowing him a bit of something special from the locker for a party at _Lux_ once and had, somehow, been roped into tutoring Diaz's son through some basic piano pieces for just such a sixth grade occasion.)

Yet, it had at least given him some relief to his stress, and though the keys were marred, they were still intact, and the piano worked five days later. It was better than he'd managed in ten years. Lucifer had no illusions he'd ever be even a shadow of what he had been. His claws were too long and thick, his fingers too bent and warped for that. But a few quiet tunes around the flat when he needed to relax…it was something at least, and he'd missed the piano furiously since Los Angeles.

However, much to Beatrice's growing and _very _vocal dismay, music did not appear to relate to her miracle power either. Lucifer was relieved on that score. Maybe she wouldn't find what she could do. Maybe because Amenadiel had been the Blesser this time, she, like The Detective before her, wouldn't actually get anything. It would be like his prat of a brother to get it all bolloxed up.

Yes, right, and he'd wake up himself with gleaming angel wings on top of that any day now.

Her musical failure so far just meant one more thing off Beatrice's list. She would find whatever she did because she was stubborn like that, and it would make it even more open season on her than it already was. Lucifer was certain of that because his life was never smooth sailing, and her _not_ able to do anything would be too safe by half.

He was mulling over all of this and waiting to go down to his booth for a quiet happy hour of human watching, when Mazikeen marched up the stairs and into his living quarters. The glint in her eyes was absolutely feral, and Lucifer knew then that she'd found exactly what they'd _both_ been looking for.

"You know where the nest is, don't you?"

She continued straight to the bar and poured herself a Jack and Coke. He noticed she did it with her left hand still. It had been close to two weeks since their showdown, but clearly she was still favoring her uninjured arm.

A small bite of pain bit into his chest, and Lucifer sighed. Feelings really were bloody inconvenient, and guilt was his least favorite among them. Easing over to the bar, he poured himself a glass of Jack as well-skipped the soda, thank you very much-and eyed her.

"First, can you take the nest if we go?"

She let out a growl of her own that was not unimpressive, just couldn't match his currently. "It's much better than it's been, like you care."

"I do, actually."

"The terms were fair, and you lost. I mean, it happens, your wings are pretty dangerous, Lucifer."

They shuddered on his back as if on their own accord. He loathed them but hadn't even thought until the idea came to him in the scuffle to use the wickedly shaped claws at the top of the wing joint against her. That had been…unexpected. Some whispered instinct that had wormed its way into his brain much the same way the unending need to protect the miracles at all cost had long before it. Part of Father's games, part of making and remaking him into whatever the fuck Lucifer was now.

"I am sorry, Mazikeen. It should have not come to a fight."

"I lose per the script every time for a decade almost. I mean, I was spoiling to kick your ass anyway, oh King."

He grimaced as he sipped his drink. "I don't need the honorific from you. I'm honestly trying to wean your siblings from it, but they seem rather petrified of not offering respect."

"They think you'll skin them alive without a 'sir, yes sir' in their attitude."

"I wouldn't."

She frowned at him. "Once, you would have. When you really ran Hell and before vacation started. You weren't always the most forgiving boss."

"Oh."

"Yeah, I miss that about you, actually. A little carnage is good for the souls we Lilim don't have."

"Still, what happened…I feel we're back at each other's throats as we were that final year in Los Angeles. I do not wish for that to be so, Mazikeen."

She set her glass down and drummed her fingers against the bar's surface. "You hurt Trix. You made her cry."

"Technically, you were my former bodyguard, not hers."

"She's family. Charlie's family. It just _is_. Anyone, even you, hurts either of them, and I'm gonna react and come for you."

"Because the Lilim were always loyal to their charges. It's how you are natured." He laughed but the strangled noise soon died in his throat. "I understand that more now than I did through most of our relationship."

"I'll still watch your ass, Lucifer, but I think if it's you or one of the kids? It's gonna be them."

"I don't know my nephew, but it seems like a better choice to put both of them above me. So very valid." He sighed and stretched out his wings behind his back. "You have to protect what's yours…I get that now. I promise that I won't harm or wound Beatrice again."

"You never lie."

"I'll try not to, then. I tend to make my own boneheaded mistakes."

"You said that, not me, oh boss." She winked at him at the use of the moniker. "But, okay, I shouldn't have dismissed how shitty Michael's news was. I know that your dad drives you beyond bonkers."

"And you exploited that rather spectacularly once," he said, his voice a low growl.

She stood up and shoved her hands on her hips. "You think I'd do that again? I am sorry about everything that happened with Cain. It almost got Linda killed. It…I was mad, and I wanted to go home, but I didn't want this to happen to you. I really fucking didn't."

He stilled and waited till he could speak again, till air was able to be drawn into his lungs. "I believe you, and I have since we reconciled. Honestly, if _this_ was what you had wanted…well, you'd have lobbied me to go back to Hell after all this happened. You never did, and I was terribly close to doing just that."

She nodded and bounced a bit on the balls of her feet. "Fuck your dad. And that I'm completely serious about. If he wanted to set Cain your way to get you to go home, to…"

"_Ruin_ me?" Lucifer asked, his voice tight. "Yes, rather elaborate fourth dimensional chess, but I do admit quite effective. But no, after that all, I have never forgotten that coming to New Orleans was your idea. I am grateful it was. I know Hell is your true home, but I loathe it."

"No duh."

"But I would have gone back, would have sat on that damn throne, and never left again because, honestly Maze, what's the sodding point of any of this?"

"Not sure yet, but it wasn't worth doing something your dad probably still wants. I just…I should have taken five seconds not to be all charging in for Trix's sake and actually thought about how shitty Michael's info had to be for you. But you do have to admit that does it really matter why the miracles are so important to you? Either way, they _are_, and Trix needs help."

He shook his head and drew his wings in again. "I wanted a choice. Eons of pointless fighting to get one, real choice in my life, but Father can't have that." Lucifer took the handle of Jack and drank directly from it, draining half of it in several, long gulps. When he set it back on the bar, Maze said nothing but waited for him to continue. "Demons have never had free will."

"Neither have angels."

"And I have never been blessed with it, no matter where I've fallen in that spectrum. Whatever I am currently. But I _wanted_ it so very badly, Mazikeen. I thought…for just a while…I thought I had what I wanted. It has been the most bitter shock of a long, wicked life to realize it was all an illusion of Father's, the longest con I've ever seen."

"But fuck your dad," she bit back, as if that solved anything. "We're here, and he's off making aliens or in another universe or doing whatever he feels like, and he might be gone for centuries if we're super lucky. Right now, at least, I dunno about you, but I feel better now than I have any time in the last ten years outside of Charlie and Linda trips. New Orleans finally feels like home."

He nodded and took another long draught. Maybe he could nip more Jack from the bar downstairs, although it was as easy to send Ezzekeen or Takazeen out for liquor store run as well. After all, Lucifer was still king in some ways. "It does…" Lucifer shook his head and sat the now empty bottle down. "How strange do you think it is?"

"Our lives have always just kind of been, Lucifer. That's the way it is."

_Oh, to be Lilim_.

They questioned so little after all. Instinct and fighting and other f-things were all that mattered. Lucifer had always emulated the clarity and simplicity of mission from the day he'd pulled himself out of the lake of fire. But, deep down, he could not shut his worries and insecurities off as easily.

"No," he continued. "I mean, a fractional part of me will always resent that, by no fault of her own, Beatrice is my muzzle. And yet, you're not wrong. The last few months have been better, like family."

"Fucked up, but definitely family, sure," Maze agreed, readjusting the lapel of her leather jacket.

"And yet, Father's machinations aside, I do care for her deeply. I guess most dogs don't cherish their leashes so."

"I still say your dad won't be back cause he's gotten busy and forgotten when the fuck it even is. I…look, I love the kid, but she's still mortal, far as we know. Maybe we'll get lucky for once, and your Dad won't get the chance to use her against you."

"You mean in eighty years none of it will matter, since she'll be in the Silver City, and there's no one left making new miracles anyway?"

"Yup, exactly. Your dad's off making E.T. or what the fuck ever, and we're here to keep Trix around as long as possible until she goes where we can't follow. Eighty years is nothing, Lucifer, so we have to make what we get count." She shrugged. "That's how I see it. Seriously, just repeat after me: your dad can fuck off."

"It's oddly naive you think I've never said that or, well, the Enochian equivalent to Father before I was kicked out of the pearly gates." 

She yanked out her hell-forged blades and spun them a few times before him, clearly testing out their balance and ensuring they didn't need to be sharpened before they hunted down the nest. "I'm _not_ naïve. I'm sure you've said everything ever to your dad, just actually _believe_ it for once. We're here; He's not. And we have a nest to make suffer. I…look, I admit it. It sucks the big one that your dad set you up. It does, but this is exactly what Lilim are like. I can't be upset for you completely because you're bitching about how I am. How my siblings are."

He quirked his head at her. "Do go on."

"Look, way I figure it, it doesn't matter why you want to do something-"

"Oh, it very much does. I bloody well do not like being _Inception _-ed into my own feelings and ideas."

"Maybe, but you can't change it, so just go on doing what you want to spite your dad. It's what you're good at anyway. And if He thinks that the miracles are just objects to fuck around with to see how they short circuit your brain, then don't let Him do it. Best way to start is making these damn leeches sorry they ever existed."

Again, Lucifer was desperately jealous of Mazikeen in that moment, of how simple things could be for her. Human feelings and emotions overwhelmed her, clearly. They were no bloody picnic for him either, but she'd coped since leaving L.A. by pushing them away, probably only indulging in them when she was back with Charlie and the good doctor. He wasn't made like that. Even if the Detective would have once called him rash-and he was, still very much was-it didn't mean he didn't think. Sometimes, it was impossible to get out of his own head. And it would chafe deeply that he most likely didn't even have dominion over that.

Always would.

But she wasn't wrong either. Shredding a horde of vampires would prove balm enough for his stained soul for the night.

Nodding, he gestured to the stairs with one hand. "Splendid, then we're not fighting any longer?"

"No, but I mean, again, next time you make Trix cry, I'm not making promises."

"Good, don't. Now, Mazikeen, lead me to the coven. I have so many _words_ to share with them."

Michael was not the first born, but he was the strongest of the archangels. Had always been, no matter what Samael would have said. Obviously, now, there was no even chance for a debate as, whatever his twin was now, an angel was currently not among the options. However, the Sword of God, Voice of the Presence, and other half of the Demiurge had always led the charge into conflict. Whether it had been in battle against demons, the monsters of the other pantheons-again Fenris came to mind-or even his own, idiot brother's legion, Michael was first on the front line. As a result, he had a cast-iron stomach and had seen more gore in his almost-infinite lifespan than humans could dream of.

But even he needed a moment to regain his composure when he found his twin and the demon Mazikeen greedily tearing limbs from vampire after vampire in the nest they'd tracked down.

The stone of the tomb he'd arrived in overflowed with fetid, almost-black blood, and the slaughter wasn't yet done. Mazikeen was slowly working over a tall, lithe vampire with stringy blond hair. Her blades flaying him inch by inch. In the far space of the tomb, his twin didn't need a blade to inflict similar carnage. Samael's victim might have once been either male or female, it was impossible to tell now, with the vampire's face shredded into chunks of meat and its hair matted with pints of stale blood.

His brother was taking advantage of the fact that without fire to burn them to ash, silver nearby, or the severing of their necks, Children of the Night couldn't truly die. They certainly didn't stop feeling pain and were incapable of shock or any such respites that would have robbed a human of consciousness long before this point. The vampire had been torn-no _clawed_-in half and from what remained of its waist, entrails fanned out.

Michael didn't need them to augur the situation.

Chewing back the sudden and surprising flare of nausea roiling within him, he straightened his glasses on his nose and hurried to his brother. Samael hadn't noticed his approach, so involved in his mission as he was, but that worked to Michael's advantage. As his brother pulled his arm back to strike again, Michael caught it and grabbed tightly onto his twin's wrist.

"Enough, Sam. It's _enough_." 

At first, and it pained Michael to even hear it, a low growl was Sam's response. Then, he stilled, those bright, glittering eyes, the ones limned with hellfire, blinked back at him. Michael held his breath at the lack of recognition in them. Currently, nothing shone there but unbridled rage. And, Dear Dad, there was so much of it. How could there possibly be room for anything else?

Sam struggled in his grip and roared, a deafening noise that even startled Mazikeen from her torture for a moment. His twin wrenched from Michael's grasp long enough to slice at him, though his claws missed contact with Michael's back, managing only to shred through his sport coat and send it falling to the crypt floor below. The archangel spun around and gripped Samael tightly, pinning one arm behind his back and grimacing at the twisted spikes he found there.

Michael exhaled and spoke again, his voice calm and clear, even as Sam pulled against him. "Samael, stop."

In the other corner, Mazikeen finished with her final victim, severing its neck with her prized blade, before turning to look at them both. "Awesome, buzzkill's here."

Sam looked over his shoulder at him, blinked again, and his eyes grew dimmer, the fire dying from them. His twin seemed to shudder, drawing what passed for wings on his back close to his shoulders. "I…Mikey, what on Earth are you even doing here?"

He let out a long breath and dropped his twin's arm, finally. Then, willing his sword to appear from the ether, he wielded it in one clean motion, severing the neck of Samael's remaining victim. Hell was already waiting for a creature as foul as that vampire, no need to delay it. Then again, hadn't this been what he'd kicked Samael quite literally into eons ago? Hell could only be worse than this as the loops obeyed his brother, _responded _to him, and altered as needed to fit the punishment scenario of the victim. Amenadiel had told him as much, when he'd dared to ask a few times after Samael in the intervening years.

But somehow this was…this was not acceptable.

It was beneath any of the Host, even if Sam was not technically among them any longer. He had been, and this slaughter was simply obscene on the face of it. More than that. It was sacrilege.

"You prayed for me, Brother. So, you tell me."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Yes, I prayed for you six days ago. Are you on a tape delay?"

"A what?"

Mazikeen chuffed behind him. "I don't understand what most of you bird brains have against keeping up with the times. Not that video tape is even close to contemporary either, Lucifer."

"True, but I'm disappointed, Mikey." His brother stood taller. Like this had a few inches on him, and that made a part of Michael deeply nervous. He'd never lost to Sam, especially when it counted, but some small part of him was suddenly running the odds of what would happen if they ever did come to blows, and Michael wasn't sure that he'd automatically win any longer. "What if it had been a true emergency? You promised that you would help me with Beatrice. Six days after could hardly be called true aide."

He watched as Sam's posture relaxed although couldn't help but notice how his twin eyed the spot just over Michael's left shoulder. _Right, the wings_. He hadn't shunted them away this time, as there had been both more pressing issues at hand and no humans around. But that was probably like pouring salt on open-gauging by the raw skin all over Samael-excruciatingly open wounds. Michael rolled his shoulders and spirited his wings away. Such gleaming Celestial gifts didn't deserve to be stained by vampire blood anyway.

"I'm sorry," he admitted sheepishly, straightening the lapel of his rumpled suit coat. "It's rather taxing to keep tabs on every Celestial. Mother and Father were, perhaps, busier making the younger Host than even I realized till I started checking in on all of them."

Sam frowned. "No one to deputize for such a task?"

"No, this is delicate." He didn't want to bring up Uriel, but if one of the Host had gone mad from being ignored, then what if there were others? If Michael didn't check in on the rest, especially exiles like Samael and Gaudium, what worse things could befall all of them? "Anyway, I am truly sorry, Sammy. I'm glad that it wasn't life-or-death with the Miracle."

Sam blinked, suddenly seeming to realize just how filthy his surroundings were. He looked down at himself and picked a stray eyeball, long ocular nerve still attached, from where it seemed glued by blood to his pants. "Oh, well, that's rather unseemly, isn't it."

Mazikeen sighed behind them, and they both turned to face her. "It's a nest we just obliterated, not some angel garden party. I say keep the eyeball there, no harm in taking a trophy or two."

Sam dropped the eye instead and let it roll across the stone of the crypt. "I suppose we've both let our own business run away with us. The miracle has a name, and Beatrice is fine for now. However, she's got a pet project she's nursing, and she wanted to speak with which angels she could. Since my social circle within the Host is limited to you and dear Azrael, she's already half-way done. Now, she'd like to talk with you as soon as possible."

Michael frowned and willed his sword away. There was no need for it. Everything in the crypt save for the three of them wasn't just well and truly dead; they were disemboweled and then some. "What type of project?"

Samael frowned back at him and then nodded toward his demon. "Mazikeen, you may go."

She shook her head and re-sheathed her blades. "Do you want to say that less like a command, oh mighty King?"

"Fine, bloody have it your way," his twin groused. "I have something I'd like to speak with Mikey alone about. Twin business."

"Would it mean you're actually going to say secret things about Trix I should know to help keep her safe?"

"No, but I would sincerely appreciate it, _friend_, if you'd get a move on back to _Tenebrae_. I'll be along in two shakes of a lamb's tail anyway." Mazikeen seemed to grumble under her breath about high maintenance angels before stomping her way from the crypt. Sam didn't waste time after that and turned his focus back to him. "Honestly, I think the spawn is grasping desperately at straws, but you can hardly dissuade her from anything. It's very vexing."

Despite everything, including the horror curled in his gut as his brother's own brutality, Michael smiled and adjusted his glasses on his nose. "Maybe I was wrong about the miracles. Maybe Father merely wanted you to put up with someone as rebellious as you are for a few decades."

"Ha bloody ha," Samael bit back. "If you must know, she's nursing an insane theory I never should have relayed to her from Amenadiel." 

Michael quirked his head at that and studied Sam more closely. "He didn't mention you'd been speaking again."

"We aren't. Ooh, are you also keeping tabs on the Nephilim?"

"Charlie is off the books."

Samael perked up at that, his wings flaring out behind him. "That sounds dangerously close to not following orders."

"Dad never kept tabs on any Host. New program so I make the rules. Second, Gabe and Raph are only concerned with the actual Host. No one said anything about me being required to report back on Nephilim." 

Sam nodded briskly. "I feel that is wise. I won't pretend to hope that Father doesn't somehow know about Charlie Martin, despite wherever dear old Dad has fucked off to. However, I think it's best if the other angels don't know about him." He shuddered upon deeper reflection. "I'd bet every bit of property I own just in Louisiana that _that_ bitch Remiel would hunt him down herself."

"He's nine, and he's hardly a demon."

"He's Celestial and not as controllable as someone like Gabriel would like. Tell me that you trust he's safe as houses, and you just keep forgetting to add him to your official notes."

Michael grimaced. It was Samael's own personal honor code to never lie. Oh, his twin was adept at saying what you thought was true, at dancing around reality with a clever turn of phrase, but he never lied. Michael had no gift for circumlocution. Never had. But he didn't lie either, and even in those last terrible moment before his sword had struck the final blow to his twin, that had remained true.

"I do worry. I do not know if full angels would be kind to him."

"You mean that Gabe and Remiel might possibly kill him for his impurities."

"I didn't say that, but I worry about the Nephilim's safety, yes. So, he's an off the record visit. He's quite something, though. Surprisingly smart and precocious."

His brother beamed at that. "Do you mean because he's part Amenadiel and whereas loyalty is the firstborn's great strength, or was, it has never been advanced planning? Or is this more because you assumed humans were fools, Brother? You've surely talked with Dr. Linda by now on your inventories."

"She's very sharp." He chuckled. The idea that Sam had ever seen a human therapist seemed laughable, and, apparently, human doctors never talked about their patients outside of sessions. In the last almost five years of checking in on Charlie-once he'd realized Charlie existed at all-Michael had never heard her speak of anything from a professional angle about Samael. She had, however, regaled him with any personal meetings with Sam, and the few cases she'd been called in to help consult on with him.

Very few.

Pity that, he'd enjoyed those stories best, especially about the other rogue psychiatrist who'd been killing patients in his support group. It was complex and confusing but also interesting. Everything the human world was so intricately complicated. Soiled, imperfect, sure. But so very different from the Silver City, and the more time he spent on earth, the more Michael found himself enjoying it.

"Anyway, Sammy, you were saying about Amenadiel and the Miracle?"

"Amenadiel and I haven't spoken since Los Angeles. That is, to be rather fair, my fault. However, in the weeks before it all exploded, he had a theory that angels, well, for lack of a better term and to sound terribly L.A., we may 'self actualize.'"

"Meaning?"

"That Amenadiel made himself mortal out of guilt, hence Charlie. The urchin is hoping somehow that I've managed to do a similar thing to myself, that guilt over that sad sack Cain has made me _this_." He hissed that last part, and his eyes went so brightly crimson it almost hurt Michael to gaze upon them. "I think she's wrong because that's just not possible, and all of us know Dad and rules and punishments, especially yours truly. But she's rather hard-headed."

"Sounds familiar," Michael joked.

Sam's eyes dimmed as he rolled them. "It is not a clever revenge plot. Although, I will grant human teenagers, even the older ones, are rather taxing. However, if her asking you and Azrael how our powers work and making some notes occupies her and takes time away from her trying to figure out her ability, then I'm fine with it. I'd rather she be chasing down dead ends than endangering her life."

"So, nothing yet on that end?"

"No, but she's not psychic-Dear Dad has she tried that more than once-and playing the violin is unconnected. She's also clearly nothing even related to a siren. She's a decent fiddler, nothing to write home about, but perfectly serviceable, but the girl couldn't carry a tune if her life depended on it when she sings. That experiment was assuredly painful." He quirked his head at Michael and sighed. "I've excellent hearing. Always did, but it's far better now, and the not-notes she hit…and I thought that Bieber chap was good for Hell loops."

"Noted."

His brother frowned. "The Detective…Chloe never developed anything. I assumed at first it was because it would have been related to her acting, and she stopped that with her father's death when she was just nineteen. Maybe Amenadiel blessed Penelope Decker incorrectly? Perhaps they're defective miracles?" Samael shook his head ruefully. "Perhaps that's an oxymoron on the face of it."

"I don't know exactly what Amenadiel did, but it's not a difficult maneuver." 

"I'm glad Father simplified the way to enslave me. How very reassuring," Sam snapped.

Michael had the decency to look at the floor, which was still slick with blood but rapidly drying. "Sammy, I am sorry."

"Not good enough. I…we aren't friends, you do get that, right? I've a vested interest-as you've seen to-in keeping Beatrice and her mother alive. If working with you does that, splendid. But too much has passed, Michael. We're not friends, and we're hardly brothers any longer, not really."

He sighed and tried to take a step toward Samael, who stepped back until his wings grazed against the stone of the crypt wall. Michael stilled and held up his hands, palms out, to his twin. "I can still hope for better. I was so very wrong, Sammy."

"_Lucifer_." His brother bit back.

"I…just wish to help you with this miracle."

"For far too bloody long."

"Yes, I can admit that." Michael said. "However, I doubt Amenadiel messed it up."

"Are you sure? He can be a bit thick."

Michael recited the few lines in Enochian for his brother and made the accompanying hand gesture that Father had trained him in shortly after Mother's banishment. "That's the whole process. I suspect you're right and Chloe Decker never developed like the other miracles because she stopped acting and became a police officer; one could hardly change their life calling more. If you're hoping that Trixie Espinoza won't find what she does, then you shouldn't. She's young yet and has over a decade in her window. She'll find it."

"I don't want her to find it," Sam groused. "Thus, it's great to have her distracted on this wild goose chase. She's human, mostly, and she has…well her father can be a right prat, but he's still a decent man. Some flaws, some tendency to cut ethical corners, terrible at improv. All that aside, he's actually a good father. I think Beatrice can't truly fathom what _ours_ is like."

"You mean she refuses to believe He'd punish any one of us as badly as He has you?"

Samael laughed and it was a sharp, discordant sound that made Michael's breath hitch. "Honestly, I do blame Father if Cain going after the Detective was all part of a long game to force me to kill that clod. However, if it was just me and my terrible ideas and rage…well, I can't completely blame dear old Dad for even this," Sam said, flaring his wings wide. "I knew. We all know. It's the first rule-the biggest rule-since he made the lot of them. We don't kill humans. I don't think Beatrice understands the unbridled cruelty and creativity in Father's wrath."

"He only asked for fealty, Sammy."

"He asked for blind servitude. That's…I'm too old and too tired to argue this point with you. Do be a dear, go find Beatrice, and let her play scientist with you. It'll buy a night where she's not desperately trying to paint a bullseye on her back. I'd like the sleep, to be honest. I'm rather shattered."

Michael eyed the scorched earth approach his brother had taken to the nest. "You didn't have to do this, Samael."

"Oh, didn't I?" His brother snorted derisively. "They were warned, twice. Their queen would have drained Beatrice dry if the urchin weren't incredibly resourceful for a human. Clearly previous examples of just killing the ones caught in the act weren't sufficient. Returning the pieces of their queen's body throughout New Orleans wasn't enough either." He waved a hand at the wall that was still drenched in ichor and entrails. "This tells the greater supernatural community here what I want them to know: _Touch what's the Devil's at your own __**peril**_."

"It was barbaric."

"Well, it lacks the flare of stabbing your own brother and drop kicking him thousands of feet into the earth's crust, but I improvised."

"I was-"

"Yes," Samael interrupted. "you've made it quite clear you're good at following orders. I just…you urchin-sit for a bit. I've helped Maze kill dozens of these filthy wretches, and all I'd like now is a bath and to sleep like the dead."

His brother turned but Michael reached out and grabbed Sam's shoulder. He stilled at the texture there, the broken and scarred waxy skin. Some of it seemed to ooze and weep at his touch, and he wasn't sure if it was because the skin was so very charred and sensitive or because half the nest had gotten scratches of their own on Samael before they'd perished.

Michael wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer.

"Please, you don't have to be so wrathful."

Samael quirked his head at Michael and narrowed his eyes. They glinted back at the archangel like overheated embers. "You'll find, _Brother_," he said, hurling the word back at him as if it were an invective. Maybe it was by now. "that my wrath is all I've left to me." He shook his head. "They got off easy. I could have dragged a few choice vermin back to my quarters, strung them up, and kept them screaming for centuries should I have willed it."

"You're better than this," Michael added, a plaintive tone to his voice that was never there with anyone but Samael. He'd begged him so many times in their lives, so many months before the Rebellion started to just _drop it_, but Samael never had learned restraint. He shuddered again at the bloodshed and scent of death enveloping them. No, Sammy still did not understand staying his hand, even now. "Please, you don't have to-"

Sam pulled away and his eyes shone so brightly in the room that Michael had to blink a few times to focus on his twin as he spoke, "'The beast that thou sawest…shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition,' or something like that? Right? I don't keep up with every translation, no interest in it, but that's the gist. Dad set up the role, maybe I just need to play it. Clearly, I've fought it forever, and it never did a damn bit of good did it?"

"You don't have to do this. It was not a battle, not at the end. It was a slaughter, and I saw you. You _loved_ it."

"I did," Sam admitted, stretching out his foul, twisted wings. "I'd forgotten how good I am at that, how right it feels. It's somehow flattering that after all this time you think there's something worth saving in me, Michael, but you'll merely frustrate yourself. Don't look for the angel of my better nature here. I left any shred of _that_ back in L.A."

With that, his brother flapped his wings and slipped through the metaphysical plane, leaving Michael in the midst of the massacre and filth of the crypt. Alone.

Trixie yawned but picked up the red pencil before her. She'd spent most of the last eight hours reviewing biology. They were up to fungi now and it was dull, but at least the pictures could be cool. But by midnight, she'd been too burned out on studying to continue anymore, even if her usual Thursday night workload sometimes carried her into 2 a.m. or later. But she'd been too antsy to go to sleep. She'd tried for about twenty minutes but tossed and turned. So, she'd snuck back out to the commons on her top floor and started drawing again. It calmed her, even if currently she was a bit blocked on the storyboarding for her _Maze the Vampire Slayer_ manga. Instead, she'd turned her focus to portraiture.

Okay, a real portrait if you happened to be a genuine miracle (some good that did her) and your best friend was the Devil.

Still, it was helping her calm her frazzled nerves and quell, at least for a while, the frustration coiling up inside of her since she couldn't figure out what she was _supposed_ to do. If Michael ever showed up to talk to her for his turn, she was going to so pester him about why God hadn't like left all the miracles at least some instructions. Or anything really.

Trixie sighed and added a darker, burnt sienna color to the arch of Luci's wing by the wickedly curved spike that poked from its high arch. It wasn't quite the coloring in real life, but she was running low on colored pencils and would have to beg a better set out of her abuelos when she was home over break in a couple weeks. The shading limitations aside, even as she added more touches to the work, Trixie couldn't help but smirk to herself in tiny triumph. It was nice that drawing him at the piano was true to life again.

Okay, so they were both rusty. Who knew that in her case almost seven months without practice was really causing her to eat it on a couple of her favorite Beethoven pieces? Lucifer never said anything, but he was at least polite enough when she practiced not to point out she was a bit rough and her timing was off sometimes. Honestly, Trixie was so glad to see him play at all that she was pleased with it even if, okay, that drunk frat guy at Deke down Greek Avenue sometimes played a little better. Not like at last call when the house parties were almost over, but at the beginning of mixers, Tyson could do some Beatles or Elton John (her grandma had a taste for him so Trixie had her "Tiny Dancer" way too many times as a kid) without hitting more than a few missed notes.

After the Everclear came out at the frat, of course, all bets were off.

But it was a good experiment, and the sessions together were fun. They'd be more rewarding if she actually figured out what her stupid power was supposed to be, but music duets were nice, and she felt like Luci seemed more relaxed after them too. She hoped so. He was both easy to read yet worked so hard to keep things shut off where he could, and Trixie hoped anything she was doing was helping. Yeah, her mom-not that Mom knew because that was a wrath Trixie was so not going to bring down on herself or New Orleans-had mentioned before on the phone that Trixie didn't have to just take care of her friend. And it wasn't _all_ Trixie did these days, even if bio was suffering just a bit. Still, she wanted to help. He'd saved her life and her mom's when it mattered.

She just…

Trixie yawned and picked back up the ebony to add a bit more color to the piano. She was so absorbed in her work that she didn't hear her sister come in.

"Wow, I guess I'm not going to call you 'The Nun' anymore, am I? Espinoza, what the actual fuck?"

Trixie stiffened but set her pencils down. It wasn't a secret to the sorority as a whole, especially after Lettie and Annie's intervention the other week, that she had a wide range of subjects she drew. Sometimes, it was the fountain on the main quad, sometimes it was stuff from back in Texas, and, okay, more recently, it was a lot of scenes from _Tenebrae_ since it was on her mind. But she wasn't creepy. She just had colorful friends.

"Veronica, hi." She checked her phone. It was almost two, and she'd been more absorbed in her drawings than she thought. "I'm not a nun."

"Well, you never go out on Thursdays or Fridays. Since January, you're barely even around on Saturdays. I just assumed you were a prude deep down."

Her terrible middle name aside, Trixie wasn't like some wrapped in cotton innocent. Okay, so she hadn't had as many opportunities for certain things yet as some girls and never mind. She was _not_ a nun. And she was getting so tired of Veronica and Mackenzie for always saying that.

"I'm just busy. I have friends in town, and I try and get work done when I can so my non-class days, I can visit. Besides, I make it to every event we have, always do."

Veronica narrowed her eyes at her and ran a hand sharply through her angled bob. "You shouldn't even _be_ a co-social chair next year. It should be all mine. I'm actually around."

"Um, I'm around about five days out of seven, and, again, I haven't missed a single Omega Chi event since pledge week. Besides, Allison seems slammed with just prepping the start of this year's spring formal. Maybe breaking it up between two people will keep us sane."

A sour expression pinched up Veronica's features as she glared down at Trixie's sketch pad. "Or you'll go all goth or Satanist or whatever, and we'll have the freakiest formal this side of that sorority with the owls and skull and crossbones mascots. Seriously, Espinoza," Veronica said, gesturing to the drawing. "that's totally nuts."

Her back went rigid, and Trixie felt eleven again and just stranded alone in Austin. She'd been stupid then and talked way, way too much about Maze. Soon, all the kids in her class started calling her crazy. Then, she'd learned to shut up even if it _were all true_. It sucked to have Veronica throwing all that stuff back in her face, even now. Not that she could explain, quite plainly, that she was far from crazy. Trixie was pretty sure saying "Actually I have Satan on speed dial and I'm a literal miracle" really would get her a reservation in the nearest mental ward.

"It's none of your business," she said, standing and gathering up her pencils and then pulling her pad tightly to her chest. "I am good at design and stuff. I am going to do a good job as co-chair, and I want to work with you to help Allison on small stuff with spring formal. Just because I draw a range of things-and there are cute doodles of my sugar glider too in the mix-doesn't mean that I'm some secret Satanist."

Which, totally true, because Luci was the last person on Earth to want a cult and also, yeah, he was many things, head of any type of sect so not one of them.

Veronica still had a few inches on Trixie, even out of her usual collection of high heels that reminded her vaguely of the nice shoes Miss Charlotte used to wear and were probably super expensive. Veronica was local and she often bragged about her family's estate in Lake Shore-Lake Vista. Big whoop. Anyway, even flat-footed, Veronica was taller than she was and stared down at Trixie, radiating maximum levels of condescension.

"You're really fucking weird though, Espinoza, and I don't get why more of the sisterhood doesn't see through your crap. I want to be chapter president by junior year. I need the social chair spot to ease into that position. My mom was Omega Chi president and so was my big sister. It's mine." 

"Fine," Trixie huffed, trying to brush past her. "I cannot explain to you how little I give a shit about being president here. I have _so_ much stuff going on. You can't even!"

Veronica shook her head and crossed her arms over her chest. "Whatever, Espinoza. Just stay out of my way, and maybe draw less crazy stuff around the commons. I mean, great for me if you do and maybe they'll un-elect you, but, seriously, you're looking cuckoo for cocoa puffs."

Trixie didn't say anything back, just hurried down the hall to her room, eyes prickling from holding back tears.

It had taken a few deep breaths, a can of Gingerale, and about thirty minutes of stroking Beelz's back before she felt calm enough to grab a shower before sleep. It was a great thing that she didn't have class tomorrow anyway because Trixie was spent, and she was not looking forward to a year of having to work alongside of Veronica. That _puta_. Ugh. However, even if it was going on three-thirty in the morning, she felt better. The hot shower had eased the tension between her shoulders and, honestly, a bit of a crink in her neck because it really had been a long time since she'd been playing her violin daily. She was standing in front of the sink and had just finished putting on a mask to clean her pores-which okay, felt slimy going on, but kind of cool and slick by the time it had dried-when a breeze from nowhere kicked up behind her and both trashcans tipped over in the wind and clattered to the floor.

Trixie brought her hands to her chest and was glad for Abuela Minnie's Christmas gift of her fluffy sushi bathrobe. At least she wasn't just in a towel, you know, in case some crazy sorority row stalker had just eased out of a stall and was about to murder her. And that, God, would be why you gave miracles powers.

_Any_ at this point.

She turned around and felt her jaw go slack at the sight. She'd been thinking either someone left a window open and a storm had stirred up and blown over the trash cans or, you know, possible psycho killer option. What she hadn't anticipated was Michael, God's right hand, standing there in rumpled khakis, a golf shirt with possible viscera on it-seriously, was that a huge swath of blood caked on his right shoulder-and wire rim glasses. Oh, and wings. Those huge, gleaming mother loving wings that had practically lit up the entire bathroom like the Vegas strip with their light.

They were awfully pretty.

Trixie shook herself mentally and pulled her hand back before she touched the right one. This was so not the time to ask about the etiquette of handling angel wings. He'd been noisy and, again, there was an angel of the lord in the bathroom and that was not good.

Michael frowned back at her and with a roll of his shoulders, the wings were gone again. A huge part of her was disappointed in that. Trixie figured if she weren't a (defective so far) miracle, that she'd be a lot more than just disappointed the wings had been put away. However, the fact that she needed to get said angel out of the bathroom was pulling her out of the temporary funk left by their absence. And fast.

She glared at him and set her hands on her hips. "What are you doing here?" she hissed.

Michael quirked his head at her, and it was so very avian in its motion, so calculating. Maze could be that abnormal on a hunt. Luci had his moments, his appearance aside, where it was so very obvious from his bearing that he was _other_, but it was even weirder somehow to see the stiffness of Michael's expression. Dude might be buzzing around Earth and checking in on the other angels, but he was super not used to being near humans.

"I don't understand. Sa…Lucifer said that you needed to talk to me. He insisted it was urgent, so I came here as he asked."

Trixie looked over her shoulder. "Great, sure, that was six days ago."

"Yes, I've been pretty busy."

"And you can't just apparate in the middle of the sorority bathroom? What's your damage?"

"To be fair, when I tracked you, I didn't know exactly where you were just narrowed in on your location. I assumed I was heading to your room."

Trixie let out a frustrated breath. "I should be, long day." She tried not to wonder if she could get an archangel to smite her current pain in the ass sorority sister. He wouldn't, but after Veronica had been the absolute queen of bitches tonight, Trixie was sorely tempted to ask. "Anyway, what are you doing here? You have to go! Get those wings out and shoo."

Michael narrowed his eyes at her. "I'm not a pigeon."

"Well, you're also an idiot and is that a fucking ear?" She gestured to a glop of flesh on his shoulder. "I thought angels didn't kill. Isn't that how we're all in this mess in the first place?"

Michael shrugged and confused the hell out of her by taking off the shirt and balling it up in his fists. "Is that better?"

He was still somewhat sticky with blood underneath, but it hadn't seeped too much through the shirt and was dried so maybe…no, still looked like a serial killer at too close a glance. Great.

She shook her head and glared at the door, willing the angel to make the obvious connection. "Wings, now, dude. I don't know what you've been slaughtering tonight, but I need you out!"

"Vampires, and it's not my handiwork, the mess just got on me, and I didn't…I am sorry about the random ear. You can thank Mazikeen and Lucifer for that. When they cleaned out that nest tonight, they were apparently both thorough and creative."

Trixie swallowed hard. She knew Maze was brutal as a hunter, when she was allowed to be. It went with demon territory, and the nest that had almost eaten her a few times certainly deserved it. On the other hand, her two best friends had left ears and God knew what dripping from a ceiling. It was not a reassuring thought.

"Great, perfect," she grumbled. "Get the wings out and go _anywhere else_."

Michael frowned again. "I am on a schedule you know. If you have a question for me, Miracle, I would like to work that in now. There are a lot of member of the Host."

"And there are a lot of members of my sorority," she whispered back. "We can talk any other time-anywhere else-so get those feathers flapping!" She tried to step forward to poke at his shoulders, as if that would make the wings pop out on their own. Unfortunately, she slipped instead on some of the trash that had spilled on the floor and fell headfirst into Michael, sending them both toppling noisily to the floor.

She groaned as he got to his feet first. Of course, he recovered faster. Maybe he could buy a clue too and get the hell out of here while he was at it. The angel was offering her his hand to help her up when fucking Veronica Chang and her roommate rushed into through the bathroom door.

Trixie froze. Her mind started playing through every possible excuse for any of this. At least his shirt with an indeterminate amount of vampire ear stuck to it was scattered somewhere in the bathroom. Maybe she'd caught a break and it was under a stall, and no one would notice. However, here she was stranded on the bathroom floor in her robe with a shirtless and obviously way older man trying to help her up. (Granted Michael looked more forty than like thirteen billion, but it was not great for her either way.)

Veronica was the first to speak, a triumphant smile on her face. "Well, Espinoza, I really was wrong about 'The Nun' thing. This is actually interesting."

Her roomie just chortled, although her eyes pretty much stayed locked on Michael. Trixie wanted more than anything in that moment for her stupid, never coming miracle ability to involve her being able to open a hole in the floor beneath her and be sucked into oblivion. _Now_ would be the time for it.

Michael grabbed her arm and yanked her up easily. Trixie swallowed hard and looked between the trainwreck she'd been thrown into. Then she turned her attention to Veronica. "Please, please don't say anything. There's an explanation for this, I swear, but I just need to get him to leave and I can totally…look, I so did not break any rules here."

"I was just coming to visit Trixie like she asked," Michael replied.

She shot him a death glare and continued to try and dig her way out of this mess. "That's not how it sounds."

Veronica laughed. "Oh, I know how it looks, and you are so done." She smirked back at Trixie before screaming loudly for the house mother. "Mrs. Murchison, Trixie snuck her boyfriend up here!"

Trixie blanched because so much world of no. Then she eyed Michael who had started to roll his shoulder just a millimeter before accepting that _now_ it was far too late for his wings. Groaning a bit, she leaned against the nearest bank of windows and continued to glare at the archangel.

_Michael, just so you know, Luci explained how the prayer thing works, and I'm really, really pissed. You could have just flown back out but noooo. Just, stop talking. You're making it __**worse**__._

He blinked back at her, seemingly startled, but then gave a tight nod.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Murchison and about half the sorority, including her Big Lettie and Annie the prez stampeded up the hall. Murchison glared at Trixie, then at Michael, and shook her head. "Miss Espinoza, downstairs to my office. Now!" She eyed the archangel. "And you…she's a freshman, shame on you."

Michael opened his mouth to say something, and Trixie elbowed him in the ribs.

_No, Michael, I can guarantee whatever you say won't help. Just be quiet_.

It should probably be a bad thing to order around an archangel and half the Demiurge and all that other stuff Luci droned on about. Maybe she shouldn't have, but certain angels shouldn't have just appeared whenever and wherever they felt like.

Lettie flashed her a sympathetic smile. "Look, let me, uh, get your guest to the porch, Little. I'll keep an eye on him for you."

Michael considered that. "I'm fine on my own, actually."

Veronica wolf whistled. "I'm sure you are."

Mrs. Murchison was turning a shade of red that could roughly be equated with tomato before she yelled at everyone again. "Everyone but Miss Espinoza, Miss Cantrell, and Miss Dawson go to bed." She sighed and looked toward Lettie. "Escort the trespasser to the porch. I'm sure Miss Espinoza will need a ride to wherever she plans to spend the night when I'm done with her."

Trixie blinked, confused. "I don't understand."

"You're out, Miss Espinoza. I don't have the authority to remove you from the chapter, but you cannot live here. You've clearly been breaking rules for months. I knew you'd had that townie in here."

Michael, deciding to be exceptionally unhelpful now, frowned and asked, "What is this townie you speak of?"

Trixie set her face in her hands. "It's you, you dingbat. Just, what the actual fuck?"

Michael took the shirt offered to him by the tall girl with her hair up in some kind of scarf or head wrapping and gave her a tight smile. He slipped it quickly on and glanced down at what it read.

_Tulane_.

Beneath the words was a cartoon grey bird with an impossibly large beak.

"What is this?"

"School mascot? Hello. My ex, Dion, was second string on the basketball team. Taller than you, but it'd fit better than anything I had." She quirked her head at him. "So, the little mentioned that you run _Tenebrae_ downtown. It's a cool club, love the schtick." She shook her head. "Maybe not coming by here at ass o'clock in the morning would have been a better call, though."

"I don't run the club and little what?"

"Sorority sister? You weren't Greek?"

"Um no. Afraid not," he said, sure he'd missed many things. Humans were very confusing. They were in the southern United States after all. How could any of them be Greek? Wasn't Trixie more Californian if anything?

The girl blinked at him. "Wait, so you don't run the club? Then…"

"Oh, I'm being rude," He replied and held out a hand and shook the girl's as gently as possible. Humans tended to be fragile too. To be fair, his twin had complained-Dad had he complained-so much when he first figured out about Father's side project. But there were some things even now that Michael didn't understand in humans' designs. It wasn't his place to ask or to ponder on it, but they were so very breakable compared to the Host. "I'm Michael. My brother runs the club. To be fair, we are twins, although we haven't been confused for each other in quite a while."

"Lettie," the girl replied, and her eyes widened. "Wait, rewind."

"Re-what?"

"Go back," she said. "You're twins? Like identical."

Michael didn't exactly know how to answer that because they had been but weren't now but explaining Lucifer to a mortal was…well, he and Gabriel and Raphael still believed keeping humans from the obviously divine was best. That rule held for the infernal too. Best not to try and explain about the Devil intricacies to her.

"Yes. And he owns the club. I suppose you would say that he knows Trixie best, introduced us."

Ha, and maybe he could learn to talk a bit around the truth as well.

Lettie shook her head and crossed her arms over her chest. "Well Trix has definitely been holding out so many details on me."

"You have no idea."

"No, I really don't. I don't know what she's doing with _either _of you because I figured townie, runs a club, maybe late twenties."

Michael frowned and tilted his head toward her. "Oh, we're far older than that."

Again, he understood enough about secrecy and keeping mum on the divine not to mention that Amenadiel, as the oldest of the Host, was only nine or so months younger than the universe itself. He and Lucifer hadn't come too much longer after that. Then again, that billions of years truth probably wouldn't help Lettie's sanity…or be believed.

Lettie's face went stony. "Trixie said that Luke was a family friend."

Michael frowned. Technically, that had been true once, even if it was clear neither of the miracle's parents would approve of her cavorting with the Devil currently. "He is."

"And somehow, she's spending either all her time with him or helps you sneak into the bathroom with her and…what the hell?"

"Not my domain," Michael replied. "Also, she didn't sneak me anywhere. I came to visit her."

Lettie's frown deepened. "The back door is the emergency exit, and it has a fire alarm tied to it if people have to leave fast. The front door is locked with a key code that we have cards to and locks down after midnight. The windows on the third floor are kept locked. So, Houdini, how'd you do it?"

"Hou-who?"

"Look, I like Trix. She's really sweet, and she's good people. I have zero idea what she thinks she's doing hanging in the Quarter so much and, apparently, whatever is going on with you three is _a lot_."

Michael nodded. "Yes, one could say matters of utmost importance."

Lettie spoke under her breath. "Oh, I'll just bet."

"Bet what?"

She blinked at him, wide-eyed. "You heard that?"

"Yes, I have excellent hearing."

"I…okay…well, this is too much for even me to process at four a.m. Here's the deal: Trixie's one of my best friends and a great little sister."

"Trixie is an only child."

"Dude, sorority, right?"

"Oh, yes," he added, even though that meant nothing to him and didn't illuminate the situation.

"Anyway, clearly you and your brother are weird guys."

He nodded. That he couldn't argue. "One supposes."

"And if either of you or the crap from that club ruins Trixie's life, then I _will_ make it a personal mission to make your eternal misery my life's work. Is that understood?"

Michael quirked his head at her. The girl was completely serious. Not only that, she clearly assumed from her tone that something prurient was going on. Normally, the archangel didn't take kindly to being threatened, but, for the miracle's sake, he was oddly glad. It was a kind gesture. Foolhardy considering what he actually was but kind.

"Lettie, I swear that Trixie's a friend. More like a ward, perhaps. Luci…_Luke_ and I keep an eye on her out here because of a sense of duty to her parents. It's not more than that."

Lettie snorted. "Sure, dude, you say that. But it's a little harder to buy when you're the one half naked in a sorority bathroom. Just saying." She pointed to her eyes and then to him. "I'm watching this whole shitshow and have some cousins who will help me dispose of your body, so help me."

Michael stood taller, impressed by her dedication to her "sister" Trixie. "I understand that, Lettie. The terms are more than acceptable. Still, you're very mistaken, but I won't let anything bad happen to Trixie Espinoza. I swear it."

"You'd better not because-"

They were both interrupted when Trixie, still in her bathrobe and with her face for some odd reason coated in green gunk, stormed onto the porch. She had a sketchpad clutched to her chest and a massive duffle bag slung over one shoulder. She shoved it into his arms without a word, and, despite his Celestial strength, even Michael could tell it weighed quite a bit.

Lettie turned and wrapped up the miracle in a fierce hug. "Are you okay, Little? Are you in trouble?"

"I'm pissed," she said, glaring at him. And Michael still wasn't sure what he'd done wrong. She'd requested an audience, and he'd granted it. "Murchison did kick me out. She said she'll call my parents tomorrow. They're on third shift all week so I begged her to at least wait till 3 p.m. tomorrow before they get bothered. She let me pack some stuff overnight, and I can come back tomorrow to move everything out. I couldn't take Beelz now, so you'll watch out for him, right? I'll come get him in the morning, and he has his food cubes in my fridge and…"

Lettie hugged her again. "I've got it. Don't worry, Little, the tiny terror is safe with me."

Trixie rubbed at her eyes. "Annie was super worried. She said that since I broke such a big rule, you all have to have a vote if I stay at all on the discipline board or something."

"Won't let it happen." Lettie eyed him and chuffed. "You clearly have a lot going on and need us more than ever. You need a place to stay? My grams lives down in Treme, and I can get her to come get you…"

Trixie shook her head. "No, I'll just head to the Quarter. Maze has space in her apartment. It's fine. I just…I so did _not_ need this tonight."

Lettie stilled but finally let Trixie go. "Alright but if you need anything, call me!"

Trixie slid away from the other girl and stomped over toward him. "Well, I guess we should get a move on, right?" She nodded toward her sister. "It's really fine. Go on, get sleep. I know you have art history at like eight." 

"And I'm sleeping my ass through that. Night, Trix. Michael, remember what I said."

He nodded. "I will."

When the door slammed shut beside them, Trixie didn't waste any time saying a quick phrase in Enochian. Her pronunciation was clumsy at best, but it was sufficient because Michael could feel the electrical-like charge in the air as the magic of the incantation flooded over him. He hadn't heard it in many years on his own, but he knew that Azrael used it often to pass among mortals.

"Invisibility?"

"Yeah, _now_. Wish you'd just flapped your wings earlier, genius angel," she snapped. "I can't Uber to the club because my credit card is actually paid for by my parents so in about six weeks I'd have to explain to Mom and Dad why I was Ubering to the Quarter at almost five a.m. Not a great idea. So, you probably don't have a cell phone-"

"I can be prayed to by the Host. It would be redundant."

"Oh, for the love of-" Trixie rubbed at her temples. "Then, great, flap away because I'm beat, and I just want to get some sleep."

Michael hesitated even as he called forth his wings. "Perhaps it would be best if we went to my apartment instead."

"Is Lucifer okay?"

He sighed and flicked his primary feathers a bit, straightening them out for flight. "He is fine, but I think he wants to be alone after such an extensive clean out of the vampire nest. I'll take you over first thing in the, well, noon."

Trixie relaxed finally and laughed. "Yeah, Luci's not an early morning guy, even now."

"For the Lightbringer, he _never_ was," Michael answered. It was just better this way. What he'd seen in Lucifer's bearing, the ire there…his brother needed to calm down before dealing with the miracle for the day. "Then," Michael continued, settling her bag in one hand and opening up his free arm. "Miracle, hop aboard, and I'll get you some rest." 

She shook her head. "If you'd gotten these things out when I told you…" But the grumbling was pointless no, and she was yawning even as she spoke. The miracle did for once as she was asked and curled up as best she could in that arm as he took off.

Michael did not expect for Trixie to rush to the half-bath in his modest apartment and retch after they landed. Perhaps he had been going a bit fast for a (mostly) human, but the miracle had been emphatic about getting somewhere to rest. He had been trying to help.

In fact, in the spirit of helping, he hurried to the guest room where sometimes, Dad help him, Gaudium decided to pop in unannounced, and set her duffle in the corner. He was about to set the sketchpad on the mattress when, curiosity got the better of him, and he flipped it open. To be fair, Michael knew little of human art. As interested as his twin had always been in human creative endeavors, Michael had never given them much thought. It was irrelevant in his duties to Father. As a result, he really had no way to judge the miracle's work objectively. He did find the work competent, and, honestly, enjoyed some of the drawings that looked more childlike with exaggerated features and too-large eyes.

They were entertaining, at least.

He flipped through the pages and became so absorbed in them, that he failed even with his keen senses to notice when Trixie had come into the room.

"Those are technically mine," she said.

"I was curious," he replied, as if that fixed anything. Michael had come to the end of her work so far and was considering the half-colored sketch before him. "Is this accurate?"

"Some artistic license as always," she replied, taking the pad back. "But yeah, he's playing again. Luci's really trying."

Michael nodded and ignored the voice in his head, that small traitorous-dangerous-voice that asked why Father had ever done such a thing. Samael had long ago been the favorite, much to Amenadiel's often very vocal frustrations, and to be honest, to Michael's own confusion. Samael pushed. It had always been inherent in Sam's nature. He argued, he wheedled, he demanded to know _why_. The rest of them understood that it was because Father wanted it. There was nothing left to question with that. But it was never enough for Sam, and somehow Father had once loved him all the more for it.

Michael sighed and shunted his wings away. If only his twin had just once listened…And yet that voice again questioned, prodded just as Sam always had. _Why was Father always right?_

He ignored it and forced such treason away.

Samael had been given a choice, and wasn't free will all his twin had even been obsessed with? His brother had had a chance to keep Cain alive and had trampled over it. Angels couldn't kill humans; all the Host knew that, had _always_ known it since humans were first unveiled to them. Sam had decided to test even that boundary.

And it had exploded back on him.

Yet…it twisted Michael's heart to be reminded afresh of what it had done to his brother. His twin. None of it seemed fair, and he just couldn't understand how Father allowed it. But those thoughts led nowhere good. Questioning got you damned, and Michael didn't want that. As much as he still cared for his brother, Samael's fate would not be his own. And the only way to avoid that was to have _faith_, to keep believing with all his being that Father knew best.

He always had before, hadn't He?

"Are you alright, Miracle?"

Trixie rolled her eyes and rubbed at the corner of her mouth. "Maybe I wasn't ready for a long flight? Luci has taken me a couple times but only really when I was unconscious because of vampires already. I didn't realize Angel Mach 10 would leave my stomach somewhere back in New Orleans." She frowned and headed back into his modest living room and kitchen, her drawing pad and a plain number 2 pencil in her hands. "Where is here anyway? Since it took a while, I'm thinking somewhere else in Louisiana?"

Michael shook his head as he followed the miracle to the den. "Columbus, actually." 

"Ohio?" 

"Yes, it made some sense. Many of the exiled or on Earth for duties Host are spread out over the United States. This is in the middle of it. If they need to visit me, this seemed like an adequate place to provide for meetings."

Trixie looked over the set up and frowned at his apartment. "Have you just moved in? _How_ did you move in? Where do you get money and-"

"There are reserves for whatever the Host might need when dealing indirectly and, sometimes, directly with humans. And I've been using this place as a base since around Halloween of 2016. It's when my brothers and I decided things needed to change with how the Host was watched and taken care of with Father gone."

Trixie blinked back at him. "Wait, so this is your apartment after twelve years? Dude, there's nothing in it at all. No decorations just a couch, a recliner, a kitchen table, and a bed with sheets."

"There's a second bedroom for me but outside of a bed and a dresser, to be fair, it's bare as well." He shrugged and sat down in said recliner. "I'm usually all over the world keeping tabs on the Host. I try and get back to the Silver City when I can. This is just in case I need an earthly spot to rest or for meetings. It's functional."

"It's depressing," she said and opened up to a fresh page of her book and started sketching. It didn't appear to be a drawing this time involving any human-like figures, but Michael wasn't sure yet what the curved shapes were going to be either. "Okay so you don't have to be Luci."

"I assure you, Sam…Lucifer, and I have never had the same aesthetic sense."

"Yeah, I get it. Luci's over the top all the time but man he has the best mattress. It's insane. I bet it's exactly like sleeping on a cloud or, well, as close as you can get. I guess after literally doing it, there's no actual earthly comparison."

"We have beds in the Silver City."

"Oh, huh," she said, frowning. "That's somehow a letdown. But you like hang out in the clouds, right?"

"After a fashion."

"Are their robes and halos?"

"Yes, there are robes. Often, they are not white, just functional and still made with battle needs in mind. Halos are mandatory during worship choir, and is this what you needed so urgently?"

"No, but I'm curious, and Maze doesn't know, and I'm not so mean that I'd ask Luci just cause I'm curious. Oh, why do you keep calling him 'Sam?'"

Michael took off his glasses and cleaned them against the hem of his t-shirt. No wonder the miracle had been sent to Samael; she was as exhausting and talkative as he was. "He hates that I do that. Granted, even in heaven and by the time the younger of the Host had come to be, he liked the moniker of the Lightbringer. I don't know if your Latin is rusty or non-existent-"

"Yeah, _Lucifer_, literal translation, gotcha."

"Correct, but Mother and Father named him 'Samael,' and that's his name. He hates it now, but it's still his actual name. I have never felt like calling him anything else."

"Oh. Does it mean anything?"

"Yes, all of our names do. I… 'el' is a suffix, it means we're _of_ Father. So, you can see why Sammy chafes at it so."

"Yeah, your dad sucks."

"You would be wise not to say or think that so boldly, Miracle."

"Whatever, your dad? He really…why does he keeping doing the crap he does? I mean everything that happened to Luci is bad enough. But suffering is all over. My grandpa got shot and a crazy cop abducted me and bad things happen all the time. It doesn't make any sense."

"I don't presume to know what Father is thinking. He allows humans free choice and some choose to act badly. It's the cost of what you've been gifted."

"I hate it."

He sighed and offered her a soft smile. "You are far from the first to feel that way. But, yes, to go back to your question and Samael, well, it's infinitely complicated."

"No shit."

Michael bristled a little. The Miracle needed to learn some respect for the divine. She was a bit too mouthy for her own good. "You were not there for any of this, so don't presume to know what the Rebellion was like." Michael hadn't meant to speak so loudly, but he'd taken on that tone, that _voice_ he'd been gifted with to compel the younger Host and humanity alike. It was booming enough to rattle every window in his apartment.

Trixie shuddered and stopped drawing for a minute before she even spoke again. "Because you led the other side, right?"

"It's old, bad blood. I did what Father wanted. That's what we do, Trixie. You have seen in spectacular fashion what happens when we don't."

"But that's fear, not love."

"I love Father. Once, even if he'll deny it, Samael loved Him too. The difference is Samael stopped respecting Father. None of the rest of us are like that. We know the limits."

The miracle grumbled under her breath but turned most of her concentration to her sketch. "Can I ask about the Fall stuff?"

"No, it's not the time, and I can't…I won't."

"Cool, glad both of you are actually so alike, ugh."

"Anyway, you were asking about names. Michael means 'Who is like God.'"

"Is that because you're pretty powerful like your dad? Or is it more the Demiurge thing, and you can actually make stuff out of nothing?"

"Perhaps a bit of both." He shrugged. "I can only make the raw material, Miracle. I can't _Will_ it to do anything. As I'm sure Sam's explained, the literal creation of the universe was a two-angel job." He smiled at that, despite everything, despite eons of fights and the rift between them. Once, it had been a game, a way to one up each other with the embellishments they'd added to Father's designs. "He's got a better imagination than I do, always has. Maybe that's Samael's problem."

"I doubt that," Trixie huffed. "So, what does 'Samael' mean?"

"Poison of God."

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I can see why he likes 'Lucifer' better. Who even names their kid that?"

"Father."

"Man, this whole everything since I bumped back into Luci is making going to mass harder. I am going to have to go over spring break with my parents and my abuelos, and I'm going to end up sitting in the pew, thinking the whole time that your dad is the worst. Not exactly a good Catholic girl thought."

"Father is _not_ the worst."

"Rae Rae says that too, but you have to admit that He's not the best or even hugs and rainbows either."

"He is tough and uncompromising, but that has always been Father's way."

"Yeah, perfect, and His way just confuses me even more." She started rubbing at the graphite with her fingers, shading and shadowing her drawing as she went. Michael still wasn't sure what it was of. "So, same thing I asked Rae Rae-can angel powers ever go wonky?"

"I don't understand the question. We are divinely inspired; we cannot have flaws by definition."

"Maze is right about the angelic ego thing. It can be a lot. No, I mean, I'm not going over the play-by-play on this. You actually speak with Amenadiel still so, like, get him to go down the full memory lane with you. However, once Amenadiel thought he was only mortal for a while because he did it _to himself_. I have this theory it happens to all of you, and that Luci's problem is guilt and his own belief of what he deserves. I don't think it is actually your dad punishing him."

"Like a very, very personal Hell loop?"

"Yes, kind of. I just…so have you ever had your powers be wonky on you?"

Michael adjusted the glasses on his nose and considered her question. "I suppose you need to know what powers I have to answer that."

"You make matter and obviously like all the archangels you're very strong and fast and powerful and yadda yadda, right?"

"Yes, and I _command_."

"What does that mean?"

"It's not too different from what Sam can do. I mean, you know about how he elicits desire from people. He's always been able to do that, even in the Silver City."

"Oh, yeah, I've never seen him do that. He never did it in front of me when I was a kid, and it's not like he goes up to patrons now and does it at _Tenebrae_. Besides, it can't work on miracles, right?"

"No, you're immune to his influence. It was one of Father's specs for your creation."

Trixie narrowed her eyes at him and started rubbing at the pencil led on her paper with a vengeance. "Makes us better leashes, right?"

"Miracle, I am sorry for what Father dragged you into. I do not wish ill on you. I did not wish ill ever on the scores of miracles who came before you and your mother."

"But they're still dead, right? I mean, you wishing things had gone better doesn't change that."

"No, it doesn't."

She shocked him then by her question. "Do they all go to heaven after?"

"Yes," he answered. "There's too much divinity in you, a fraction compared to an angel or a demi-god, but there's still too much compared to a normal human for you all to go anywhere else."

She stilled and tapped the eraser end of her pencil on the table. "What if that's not where I want to go?"

"You're nineteen. If Samael, Mazikeen, and I have any say in it, you're not going anywhere, Miracle, for a very long time. Second, everyone wants to go to the Silver City. It is paradise there."

"But Luci and Maze won't ever be there."

"Demons don't have souls, Trixie."

"Exactly. Seems like a big rip off to me."

"You have a lot of opinions for someone who's barely started college."

"I'll be a whole year in come May, I'll have you know," she replied. "I just…so you can what? Also 'desire' people?"

"No, I can make them _obey_. I can't do it on Amenadiel as he's older than I, and I can't do it on other archangels. They're equal to me, more or less. However, on the younger Host or on humans…even against demons, it works."

"So like compulsion?"

He nodded. "Exactly that."

"Prove it."

"You think I'd lie?"

"No, but I dunno, show me."

Yes, Michael could definitely see why this miracle had been especially fabricated just for his twin. She was easily as stubborn as Sam was. "Very well," he answered. Sitting up in his recliner, he coughed a bit and looked at Trixie. Gathering the power bestowed in him by Father, Michael spoke again, his voice resounding deeply enough to make the windows shake anew. "_Touch your nose, Miracle_."

She quirked her head at him, but then laughed and kept drawing. "Right, really had me there. The windows shaking though was cool."

"I don't lie!"

"Then, uh, you're not doing it right? Maybe you're rusty too. I dunno. I didn't feel anything."

Michael quirked his head at her and tried again, this time his voice booming enough to make a few chips of plaster fall from the walls. "_Stand up now, Beatrice Espinoza_."

She rolled her eyes at the request and kept on with her art. "Sure, I'll get right on that."

He slumped back in his chair blinked at her. He knew the miracles had been made resistant to Samael; he'd blessed them that way, but he'd never had an inkling there was a deeper immunity to, at the very least, both halves of the Demiurge as well.

"That should have worked."

"Oh," she said, pausing again and looking up at him with wide, brown eyes. "So, it really is a 'me' thing."

"I suppose so, but that's the extent of what I can do, which, I'd like to see you make matter out of nothing. It's not easy, Miracle."

"I don't do anything."

"But you will," he said. "Sam was hopeful you wouldn't."

"I get that impression, believe me."

"But you shall. It's inevitable, but it comes at its own pace."

"Well, I wish it would stop taking its sweet time because I'm getting bitten by leeches _now_. I'd really like some super strength or laser vision or whatever ASAP."

"Yes, I'll get Father on that," Michael replied drolly.

"So, your powers never went weird?"

"No, the closest is now when around a miracle, and apparently, I can't force you to do anything with a command."

"Okay, but you and Rae Rae have glasses. Are you the only angels without 20/20 vision?"

"I…" Michael stilled. He hadn't thought much about it. It had been a recent development for him. Azrael had had spectacles since some time in the Renaissance, if memory served, but he'd only started with his near-sightedness within a year of Uriel's death. "No, I had perfect vision until around the time I started checking in on the Host regularly."

"Did you get injured in a fight with another angel? Maybe with a demon?"

"No, I just…one day I started being unable to see as well in the far distance. Azrael was eventually the one who, bless her, pointed me toward her optometrist."

"Ooh, does your eye doctor know?"

"I have no idea. It's not like I told her, and Rae Rae has enough sense not to either."

"Wow, if she does know, that would be so trippy. Eye doctor to the angels."

"I am sure she doesn't." Although he wasn't exactly. At best, Dr. Donohue kept her thoughts to herself, but he wasn't one hundred percent sure angel eyes weren't different in some obvious way to a physician who knew enough. However, she wasn't the kind of blubbering mess that most humans became when they glimpsed the divine like angel wings either, so it was probably the optometrist had no clue. "Anyway, I guess that's the one unusual thing about me compared to the other angels except for Azrael, yes."

"And it just happened?"

"No external trauma. Well…" he trailed off. The first time he remembered having trouble seeing happened within a few days of finding what was left of Uriel's remains, what bit there was, and taking that back to the Silver City. It still was so painful a sight because angels didn't kill angels either. They had fought of course, but none had ever managed to take another's life before. It had seemed so very ugly.

Trixie leaned closer and touched his hand. He startled at the warmth there. "Sorry, you trailed off. I…there is something, isn't there?"

"I don't know. Emotionally, I was very wrecked at the time. One of our younger brothers, Uriel, was killed, and I found what was left of him. It was such an ugly sight, such a defilement of everything because of a mystically endowed blade…perhaps I no longer wished to see so clearly. Or, perhaps, even angel senses wear out over billions of years. I don't know."

She nodded. "But it's still something. So, a demon or something got him?"

Michael didn't want to get into it with her. The miracle needed to trust the three of them, and he wasn't sure if telling her about Sam's role in Uriel's loss would damage the affection the miracle had for his twin. Besides, it wasn't his truth to tell and, worst of all, it wasn't even Sam's fault. Not really. Uriel had snapped without Father present, and if any of the archangels had noticed…if he and Raphael and Gabriel hadn't been lording their powers over their siblings but actually caring for them, they'd have _known_ how broken Uriel had become.

No, his hands were far more covered in blood on this than even the Devil's, and Michael knew it.

"Yes, something else definitely did." He sighed and looked out his window. "The sun is already rising, and we'll need to recollect your stuff for moving soon. I should let you get to sleep."

"Hey, wait!" She said, leaning over and blowing on her drawing, forcing the spare eraser leavings and spots of graphite away. "I made you something."

"What?"

She pulled the sketch from her pad and handed it to him. "You have nothing here. It's so bland. You need anything to make it homey."

He looked down at the picture and frowned. "This is a still life of croissants."

A considerable rumble echoed from the miracle's stomach, and she blushed. "Well, I was starting small. This is practically a motel the way you treat it, so take some motel art for it. Besides, I'm pretty hungry. You don't happen to keep food, do you?"

"I don't need to eat."

"Neither does Luci but…"

"He inhales Scotch, not the same thing as eating."

"Judgey," she quipped and then took the drawing back. "Oh, let me sign it too. Then you can frame it and be on your way to a soothing office decor. No one finds food pictures something to object to."

"I suppose not," he said, standing and heading to the kitchen anyway. "Gaudium eats, and he was here earlier in the week. He ordered out from somewhere, and if the food isn't too old, you're welcome to it."

"Sounds amazing."

"You're joking?"

"Dude, I ate twelve hours ago, so anything you have would be great…as long as it's not like green and fuzzy."

"I'll make sure it isn't before I hand it to you."

"Great," she said, scribbling one last thing on her sketch. "Then you, 'Who is like God,' have just earned yourself a Trixie Espinoza original."

Michael laughed at that. He was sure no one would want the picture she'd doodled for him, but to be fair, it was still better than bare walls. Reaching the fridge, he opened the door and found the lone Styrofoam container Gaudium had left behind. When he opened it, Michael didn't find anything fuzzy or touched by mold, but he did blink. He could have sworn that the fallen angel with his love of exotic spices had ordered Indian food on Monday.

Where the two croissants with butter and jam came from, instead, Michael wasn't sure. Then again, it had been an awfully long week, and he could be too tired to be remembering straight. After all, Sam wasn't wrong on that score. Supervising the Host was running him ragged, and Gaudium must have ordered in breakfast at the last minute instead. At least it wasn't rancid, and would fill Trixie up before she passed out.

Thank Father for the small miracles too.

"I'm bored."

Lucifer looked down at the urchin. He'd come to meet Mazikeen, and the crafty demon had somehow maneuvered her way out of being in her flat at all. She'd run off on a bounty pick-up, leaving him alone with the offspring, when all he'd wanted was a quick moment to discuss an order mix-up at _Lux_.

The child looked up at him again and crossed her arms over her chest. "I'm really bored. You promised to teach me to drive, remember?"

"Yes, and I do keep deals, but I refuse to keep them with my Corvette." Which technically he'd stolen, but it was his now, and he was not risking its health in the hands of an eight-year-old.

"Then we should do something. Maze was going to teach me choke holds today. Do you want to do that?"

Lucifer pulled out his phone and started checking his various social media accounts. There was a promising note from a lad on Grindr he might even be able to capitalize on later that night. He had absolutely no interest in inconveniencing himself by teaching the child anything. Didn't she have school for that, anyway? He knew he'd been there once before.

"Nope."

"Lucifer!" the child shouted, grabbing his hand and yanking on it. "Come on, can't you play at least a little?"

"I'm not here to entertain you. I'm here waiting for Mazikeen to come back. It's quite different, spawn. Can't you entertain yourself?"

"But you're here, and you're so cool."

He preened at that and finally set his phone back in his trousers pocket. "That is an indisputable fact. I suppose I can reward such flattery with a spot of a game of some kind. Have you any toys?"

"Tons!"

"Great, lead the way then and I'll try not to die of boredom until that pesky demon of mine returns."

The spawn jumped up and kept yanking on his arm. Lucifer was grateful that, at least, she wasn't sticky in any way he could discern. He'd rather not ruin good Burberry. She pulled him with gusto toward her room and pointed to a carved chest at the foot of her bed.

"I have so much stuff! There's a lot of Wonder Woman cause she's my favorite, and there's my ninja chemist doll. and I have some my little pony and-"

Lucifer filtered out some of the child's rants as he dug deeper into the chest._ Aw, yes, that will do nicely_. He pulled out the squeaky hamburger he found and squeezed it for the urchin. "Well, do you want to fetch this or not?"

He squeaked it again, but instead of growing eager, the child stomped her foot on the floor and rolled her eyes at him. "Luuucifer, that's one of The Kraken's old chew toys. I'm not a chihuahua."

"Are you sure?" He squeaked it some more. "It's rather soothing in a weird way. Seriously, I'll just give it a toss, and we'll see how you do finding it?"

"Still, not a dog."

"Very well…"

_Squeak, squeak, squeak._

Lucifer groaned as the last vestiges of sleep let go of their hold over him. Honestly, a trip down memory lane to recall one of the (alright, repeated) times he'd played fetch with Beatrice was far better than the nightmares plaguing him of late, but he wasn't sure why he still had the audio from it blaring in his ear.

There was no actual tiny hamburger here.

And yet, _squeak, squeak, squeak_.

Opening his eyes, Lucifer stared down at his chest and yipped to find the urchin's pet, Beelzebub (still not amused by that) staring back at him. The little monster wasn't making its usual cicada-like chittering but instead was regularly squeaking as if it were a dog toy come to life.

"What the-"

And the little beast had the actual gall to hiss again like a plague of damn cicadas, and Lucifer would know as he'd been in Egypt back then, and then launched itself at his nose, chomping onto it with utter ferocity.

Much to Lucifer's annoyance, the bite _hurt_.

_Oh, for the love of Dad…_

He shot up and poked the hellbeast delicately with one claw. The flying squirrel released its bite immediately and jumped from him to glide across the expanse of Lucifer's bedroom and scurry who knew where. Not his problem. He was more preoccupied with the stream of blood dripping from his nose and onto his exquisitely high thread count sheets. Standing and hurrying to his bathroom, Lucifer grabbed a hand towel and then shuffled to his walk-in closet. It was a pain to fumble with his slacks (navy today) and the compress for his wound at the same time, but he managed.

Then, he hurried down the stairs to his main floor because if he were bleeding by such a minor inconvenience, then a miracle was nearby, and he only knew one in the city.

What he did not expect, when he tromped down his stairs was to find Beatrice, his brother looking even more unrested than usual, a pile of her suitcases, and Beelzebub's cage all in the far corner of his living room. Yes, he'd moved out his library lately and to an estate further removed from the Quarter. It hadn't really fit with his lifestyle currently, and the books had merited some more intensive climate-controlled storage than he was providing on _Tenebrae's_ top floors. He'd noticed it when he'd rummaged around to find _Gray's Anatomy_ for the urchin.

However, he had not been trying to hint that said urchin should camp out in his home with no notice like a squatter.

Lucifer's wings twitched as he appraised the situation. "Beatrice, why did your rat bite me awake?"

She raked a hand through her hair and sighed. "First, you picked him out for me so he's technically the sugar glider you bought. Second, Beelz is awesome, but okay he might not like you very much."

"Gee, wonder why, child."

"And he also is feeling really unsettled today. I just set up his cage and was getting him out to stroke his back and calm him down and he bolted. Sorry. Is it deep?"

"No, and I suppose if you were to leave, it would heal on up." He glared at his brother. "How in Dad's name did you interpret 'Talk to the spawn ASAP' as 'please have her move in with me?'"

Michael, despite his overbearing and often pillock-like behavior, couldn't help but smirk. "To be fair, Brother, if the little beast aimed for your nose, he had quite a target with it."

"Yes, insulting someone with mostly identical bone structure underneath makes a lot of sodding sense," Lucifer grumbled half-heartedly before sitting down at his piano bench. "What the bloody hell is going on?"

"Well, you should ask your genius brother," Trixie snarked.

Lucifer arched an eyebrow ridge at her even as he mopped at the blood on his nose. "You really don't care about insulting the Demiurge at all, do you?"

"Not when they pop in at four a.m. to my sorority bathroom and get me kicked out of the house."

"You moron," Lucifer replied, glaring at his twin. "I said she wanted to speak with you as soon as possible, not just barge in wherever she was like a twat."

"I thought it might be important," Michael replied, tiredly. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean for any of this to happen."

"I might get kicked out of Omega Chi altogether. I can't find a dorm with eight weeks left in the semester, and I can't afford to rent a hotel room because I don't have that kind of money on my student job, and if I tried charging even a fraction of that to Mom and Dad..."

Lucifer stiffened and pulled his wings tightly against his back. "We do _not_ want The Detective here. But can't you take the third bedroom below with Maze and Takazeen?"

"I can't. Maze doesn't like how Beelz barks."

"What?" Lucifer pressed.

"That squeaky toy noise? He does it about three hours in a row when he's awake early in the morning and stuff. Maze heard about five minutes of it and said I have to stay up here."

"How do you sleep through that?" Lucifer asked.

"Oh, I have ear plugs."

Lucifer set the rag away and assumed that he was mostly staunched up. It wasn't like with the red on red (_oh thank you, Father_) either his brother or the urchin would notice much difference. "So, just let me get this straight. Because Michael barged into one of my top favorite scenarios but cocked it all up like an idiot, you live here now with that rat, and it'll make that infernal squeaking noise late at night for hours where I can hear it?"

Michael shrugged. "You said it was urgent!"

"Oh, don't even start with me," Lucifer snapped.

"Well, I can get you earplugs too," Trixie offered meekly.

Lucifer growled a little but didn't put much heart in it. "Bully for you, urchin, and I appreciate that offer, but I have hearing much more keen than that."

She frowned back at him. "Huh?"

He rolled his eyes. "The owner of _Le Deux_ at the end of the block is actually money laundering for some small time dealers in the Big Easy, and I know this because they're talking about it right now in his back office. Infernal hearing is really something."

His brother looked at the floor on that admission. Michael bloody well knew that angels couldn't hear that well, and yet another _thank you, Dad_ moment in Lucifer's long, exhausting life. "We can figure things out; I swear."

"One would hope so," Lucifer replied. "What time is it?"

"About one," the spawn replied. "I have to go and try and find Beelz. I don't want him to get hurt."

"My quarters are fairly well-kempt, child, give us some credit here."

"Yeah, but…let me get him. He's very traumatized." She hopped up and scurried up the steps.

"He's traumatized," Lucifer grumbled. "That monster almost took my nose off."

Across from him on the sofa, his twin had the gall to chuckle. "Samael, you who led the Rebellion, you who have ruled over Hell for eons with every demon and monster humans can fathom and some they can't possibly comprehend, and you're threatened by a squirrel?"

He flashed his eyes more brightly at his twin. "It's technically a sugar glider, and while the urchin loves him, it is clear that conniving beast does _not_ feel the same way about me. If I'd known, I'd have tried to say I'm sorry with a ferret."

"You were bribing the miracle for forgiveness?"

"Not in so many words…" Lucifer hedged. "But it worked, and that's what matters. I did not procure the little demon, however, in anticipation that it would be living with me. That was not in my plans. So, Brother, explain again how you orchestrated a sorority house panty raid."

"I did no such thing. I flew to where the miracle was. I didn't realize there were so many rules for sorority houses. I meant nothing untoward."

Lucifer rolled his eyes. He was certain of that much. Some of the Host might have experienced the joys of earth, like Amenadiel now had and like Azrael may have at some point on Earth. However, his twin was downright ascetic in his lifestyle. There was no way Michael had ever really done or thought anything untoward in his life.

"I'm aware, but apparently that old bat who runs the house didn't believe you or your intentions."

"No, but perhaps we can find a better place for Trixie than your alcove," Michael said.

Lucifer sighed. "I'll allow her to stay for a bit, and we can look into perhaps fortifying one of my properties in the city for her. I am sure if ordered, at least Ezzekeen and Takazeen would stay with her. I may yet be able to recruit more Lilim for such a task. I just…somehow it's a long day already, and I've only been up thirty minutes."

Michael averted his gaze, and Lucifer's body tensed. He knew his brother's tells by now. Something worse was already on the horizon. "Well, Brother, don't hold back now. What worse things could have happened?"

"Mrs. Murchison told Trixie that she'd be calling her parents after they were off shift." Michael frowned. "I think she only was able to get Mrs. Murchison from delaying at all because your detective and her husband were on something called 'third shift,' but I don't know what that means."

"Not my detective, not any longer," Lucifer huffed. "And fuck, when will the bat try contacting them?"

"Maybe by three or so? Why?"

Lucifer stood and headed to his balcony. "Because that cannot happen. The Detective can't come here. It's an atomic bomb waiting to go off already, and we are struggling to keep just _one_ miracle intact."

He was stopped at the edge of his curtains by Michael's hand on his shoulder. "You can't go, Sam."

"The bloody hell I can't. Murchison has had it out for Beatrice all year and is a thoroughly awful woman who I can guarantee is about to get a preview of the life she's clearly earned for herself in the great beyond." 

"Humans shouldn't be exposed to the divine or the infernal," Michael recited as if by rote. "It's best if-"

"Well, you've mucked it all up, haven't you? Someone has to fix it, and it's going to be me." Lucifer pulled away and stepped out onto his balcony, spreading his wings wide and, for just a moment and despite their current, shameful shape, enjoying the way the air felt against the skin there. "You have done such a bang-up job so far, Mikey. So, you take care of the urchin and find that rat she loves. I'll have a talk with Murchison."

"Sam," Michael started but then hesitated.

He turned and eyed his twin. "Yes?"

"Try not to drive the woman insane, alright?"

"Unseemly, is it?"

"No…I…just perhaps it would draw too much attention and drag in even Chloe Decker, herself, if Trixie's sorority house mother becomes famous for screaming about the Devil."

He stilled as if cold water had been doused over him. Even now, the Detective's name had that effect on him, always would. "I won't drive the old bat insane, Brother. I promise you. However," and he let his eyes flash brilliantly again. "she and I are long overdue for a chat."

With that, he flapped his wings and slipped between the planes of existence, hurrying as discreetly as he was able to the Omega Chi house. This visit was assuredly going to be his utmost pleasure.


End file.
